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IMMORTALITY. 



Camtrttrge: 

PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, MJL 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



IMMORTALITY. 

J 

FOUR SERMONS 

^reatf)& kfore tije ^Hntbnsttg of Cambridge, 

BEING THE HULSEAN LECTURES FOR 1868, 



By J. J.lsTEWART PEKOWNE, B.D. 

Vice-Principal and Professor of Hebrew in St David's College, Lampeter, 
Prebendary of St David's, Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Norwich, 
Late Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 



CAMBKIDGE : 

DEIGHTONT, BELL, AND 00. 
LONDON: BELL AND DALDY. 
1869. 



CONNOP THIRLWALL, D.D. 

LORD BISHOP OF ST DAVID'S, 
WITH PROFOUND ADMIRATION FOR 
HIS GENIUS AND LEARNING, 
AND WITH A GRATEFUL SENSE 
OF MUCH PERSONAL KINDNESS 
RECEIVED. 



PREFACE. 



These Lectures are a fragmentary contribution to 
the literature of a great subject. Anything like 
completeness, or even fulness, of treatment was im- 
possible within the limits to which I was compelled 
to confine myself. And though in printing, I 
have added some passages to the Lectures, as origi- 
nally delivered, I have still found it necessary to 
omit many points of interest and importance, which 
might naturally have been discussed as belonging 
to my subject. For an omission of this kind in 
the last Lecture, some apology is due to my readers. 
Nothing is said there on the question of future 
rewards and punishments, although in the First 
Lecture it was comprised within the scope of my 
argument. I had said, that I hoped to show T , that 
the Christian scheme satisfied us, not only of 
existence, but also of recompense after death. But 
to do anything like justice to such a question, it 
would not have been sufficient to maintain that 



viii Preface. 

Christianity satisfies our conscience, by its clear 
recognition of the truth, that future recompense 
will be " according to the deeds done in the body." 
It would have been necessary also to meet the 
moral difficulties, arising from the application of 
the term aiwvios (" eternal"), to future punishments; 
and this would have involved a careful investigation, 
both of the language of scripture, and of the history 
of its interpretation, from the days of Origen to our 
own. For such an investigation I have not as yet 
been able to command the necessary leisure. 

It may be well, perhaps, to state briefly what 
is the scope of these Lectures. 

In the First, I have endeavoured to indicate 
the leading features of three systems, each of which 
professes to deal with the problem of a Future Life, 
and each of which at the present time counts 
numerous disciples. Without pretending to discuss 
any of these systems at length, I have satisfied 
myself with drawing attention to some of their 
salient defects. Thus, Materialism assumes a great 
deal which it cannot prove, and is supremely in- 
different to facts, while professing to deal only with 
facts. Pantheism destroys personal identity in an- 
other life, and gives such immortality as it has to 
give, only to an intellectual aristocracy. Spiritual- 



Preface. 



Vll 



ism, — understanding by that name the system which 
admits a belief in God and the immortality of the 
soul, apart from Revelation, — argues for the perpe- 
tuity of individual existence, from the facts of 
human nature and the constitution of the world, 
and so far lends some confirmation to our hopes, 
but fails to yield us that certainty which we crave. 

As attempts are constantly made, to get rid of 
the argument from the witness in man himself to 
his own immortality, the object of my Second Lec- 
ture was to show, in a summary review of some of 
the principal systems of Pagan belief and Pagan 
speculation, how real and how wide-spread is the 
instinct in human nature, which leads us to look 
beyond the grave. This review seemed to tend to 
the conclusion, that on the whole, there was a de- 
velopment of belief ; that generally speaking, in 
each nation the dogma grew in distinctness, as 
time went on ; and that in particular the moral 
element, the doctrine of future retribution, did not 
belong to the earlier stages of belief 1 . But on the 
other hand, it was equally plain, that in spite of this 
progress, and in spite of the efforts of their most 

1 See, on this growth of the moral element in the doctrine of a 
Future Life, J. H. Fichte, die Seelenfortdauer und die Weltstellung 
des Menschen, p. 304 ff. 

P.H.L. h 



viii 



Preface. 



brilliant thinkers, to solve the problem of man's 
destiny, they all alike failed in casting any real 
light on life and immortality. They all confess 
their imperfection, they all wait for some satisfying 
answer to their hopes and yearnings. 

The Third Lecture deals with the problem, how 
far a revelation of the Future Life was made to the 
J ews under the Old Covenant. Of the remarkable 
fact, that, in the Law of Moses, the promises of a 
Future Life are never appealed to, as motives of 
obedience, I have not attempted any explanation. 
I have merely suggested some considerations, which 
should weigh with us in dealing with the problem. 
But to the wider question, what knowledge was 
actually possessed by the saints of old, of a future 
existence, of retribution after death, and a resurrec- 
tion of the bod}^, I have endeavoured to give an 
answer, drawn from a comparison of all the principal 
passages which have any bearing upon the subject. 
The result of the investigation was, to show that 
although there is very little of a direct testimony 
to the belief of the Jew in Immortality and a 
Resurrection, yet that such a belief was virtually 
implied, in the fact of the soul's conscious relation 
to a living God 

The Last Lecture explains the nature of the 



Preface. 



ix 



evidence which is furnished by Christianity to as- 
sure us of a Future Life, and a Resurrection of the 
Body. Christianity appeals to the fact of Christ's 
Resurrection^ as the evidence that we also shall be 
raised, because by His close and intimate union with 
us, as our Redeemer, His Resurrection is the pledge 
and type of our resurrection. Christianity furnishes 
us also with the inner witness to this fact, in the 
indwelling of Christ's Spirit in our hearts, sanctify- 
ing our bodies as well as our spirits, and so assuring 
us that our bodies, raised from the dust and glori- 
fied, shall be re-united to the glorified spirit. The 
resurrection of the body is then shown to be a 
reasonable inference from our natural constitution, 
and the difficulty of supposing that the body which 
turns to corruption can be raised again, is met 
by recourse to natural analogies. Christianity, there- 
fore, gives us the positive evidence we crave, and 
satisfies the irrepressible yearnings of the human 
heart to ascertain its future destiny. 

That such a subject, at all times of intrinsic inter- 
est, possesses at the present time a peculiar import- 
ance, will not be questioned. Both at home and 
abroad may be seen abundant evidence of the rapid 
growth of materialistic doctrines. Men insist, more 
and more, upon the study of what they are pleased 

62 



X 



Preface. 



to call facts, meaning by that name, only such pheno- 
mena as come under the observation of the senses, and 
either deny or disregard, as unknown, and unknowable, 
all that lies beyond this narrow range of observation. 
In Germany, the Pantheistic philosophy of Hegel 
and Schelling has yielded to the materialistic doc- 
trines of men like Vogt, Moleschott, and others of 
the same school. It is some evidence of the preva- 
lence of such doctrines that a manual such as that of 
Biichner {Kraft und Staff), which, without laying 
claim to any original research, summarizes, and puts 
in a clear and popular form, the chief arguments of 
the materialists, passed in five years through seven 
editions, and has now reached a ninth. 

In France, if we are to credit the Bishop of Or- 
leans (Les Alarmes de F Episcopal justifies par les 
fails), "Materialism is publicly taught, under the 
" sanction of the Minister of Public Education, and 
"is assuming every day more vast and more threat- 
ening proportions." "It is triumphant," he asserts, 
"in the School of Medicine in Paris. We recollect," 
he continues, " those wild cries of, vive le mater ialisme, 
uttered last year (1867) at the opening of the ses- 
sion :" and he then cites passages from a number of 
theses, admitted by the Faculty of Medicine, and by 
the authority of the University, which maintain the 



Preface. 



xi 



doctrines of materialism in their most extreme and 
repulsive form, and formally deny the being of a 
God, and the responsibility of man. The same doc- 
trines, it is alleged, are inculcated, even in some 
schools for girls, which were founded with the pro- 
fessed design of training them as libres penseuses 
and the distinctive feature of which is, that morality 
is taught apart from religion. 

If there is less of systematic and formal inculca- 
tion of materialism in England, it cannot be denied 
that there is a tendency in some of our scientific men 
to use language, w T hich unquestionably has a material- 
istic colouring. Do not let me be ranked with those 
who dread or are hostile to science, because I say 
this. No one rejoices more than I do in the pro- 
gress of all true science ; no one more heartily 
honours the men who have devoted their lives to 
some of the highest pursuits which can occupy the 
mind of man ; no one is more thoroughly convinced 
that there is nothing in science which can be re- 
garded with suspicion, as antagonistic to religion 
or to our eternal hopes. Indeed I deeply regret 
the language which is sometimes used by theolo- 
gians, in reference to science and scientific men, and 
the jealousy, the distrust, the suspicion, which are 
thereby too often engendered between those, who, 



xii 



Preface. 



if they understood one another better, might be- 
come fellow- workers in a glorious cause, the most 
glorious to which man can devote himself, the cause 
of truth. 

I hope, therefore, I shall not be misjudged if I 
venture to offer some comment on Professor Hux- 
ley's paper in the Fortnightly Review for last month 
(February 1869) "On the Physical Basis of life." I 
desire to speak with all courtesy of a writer for 
whose abilities and attainments I entertain a very 
sincere respect. Mr Huxley says, that he is "no 
materialist, but on the contrary believes materialism 
to involve grave philosophical error" (p. 141); and 
I am bound to believe him. I will go further and 
say, that his theory of a protoplasm, supposing it 
to be established, would not alarm me. I should 
not feel, that in accepting the description of organic 
life in the language applied to physical forces, I was 
necessarily " placing my feet on the first rung of a 
ladder which leads to the antipodes of heaven. " 
At the same time I must confess, that I am wholly 
unable to see where the difference lies between his 
language, at least in some portions of his essay, and 
the language of the avowed materialist. Thus for 
instance, he quotes with approval the following pas- 
sage from one of Hume's Essays: — 



Preface. 



xiii 



"If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or School Meta- 
physics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract 
reasoning concerning quantity or number ? No. Does it contain 
any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence ? 
No. Commit it then to the names; for it can contain nothing 
but sophistry and illusion." 

And he then adds : — 

"Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble 
ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, 
we do know nothing and can know nothing'? We live in a world 
which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each 
and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence 
somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was 
before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be 
fully possessed of only two beliefs : the first, that the order of 
nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is 
practically unlimited ; the second that our volition counts for 
something as a condition of the course of events." 

Is it putting an unfair construction upon this 
remarkable paragraph to say, that Mr Huxley here 
expressly excludes everything, as a legitimate sub- 
ject of enquiry, but such phenomena as can be tested 
by experiment and observation? Does he not affirm 
that we do know, and can know, nothing of matters 
which lie outside of this region, and in which must 
certainly be included, the soul, its relation to God, 
and its future destiny. That in the same breath he 
should allow that " matters may possibly be impor- 
tant," about which we not only "do know/' but "can 
know nothing," is an inaccuracy which I will not 



xiv 



Preface. 



press. If he had said merely, — I, as a physiologist or 
a natural philosopher, have nothing to do with any 
but physiological questions; psychology does not 
concern me: — such a statement would have still left 
it an open question, whether there were truths ascer- 
tainable by other methods than those of "abstract" 
or "experimental reasoning." But unless I misap- 
prehend him, Professor Huxley denies, that there 
are any such truths, or that if there are, they can be 
known. This may not be materialism in name, but 
it is materialism to all practical purpose. And when 
he continues on the same page : 

" In itself it is of little moment whether we ex- 
press the phenomena of matter in terms of spirit; or 
the phenomena of spirit, in terms of matter; matter 
may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may 
he regarded as a property of matter — each statement 
has a certain relative truth:" — the words in italics 
are a well-known materialistic formula, and I do not 
see that Mr Huxley's qualification takes off its edge. 
The latter part of the paragraph, which I have quoted 
above, fills one with astonishment. Why is it "a 
plain duty" for each one of us, to do all in our power 
to lessen the misery and the ignorance, which exist 
in the little corner we can influence ? "Whence comes 
the sense of duty, but from the sense of responsi- 



Preface. 



xv 



bility? And to whom are we responsible, and what 
is the consequence of neglect of duty? Are these 
questions about which we need not trouble ourselves, 
and to which we can have no answer ? And is it 
really the fact, that in order to exert ourselves ef- 
fectually to banish ignorance and misery, we need 
but two beliefs, the belief " that the order of nature 
is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which 
is practically unlimited;" and the belief, that "our 
volition counts for something as a condition of the 
course of events"? Are these the levers by which 
we are to move the moral world? Are these the 
motives which shall lead, through self-sacrifice and 
devotion, to the regeneration of society? It must 
be confessed that these are not the beliefs by which, 
in past ages or in our own hitherto, the great work 
has been accomplished. It has been accomplished, 
so far as it has been accomplished at all, by men of 
humble hearts and holy lives, who have not counted 
their lives dear unto themselves, whose motive has 
been, like that of the Apostle, " the love of Christ 
constraineth us," and who, like him, have been able 
to look forward to "a crown of righteousness," as 
the reward of their patience, their labour, their self- 
sacrifice. History as yet has not given her verdict 
on the side of Professor Huxley. Nor is there any 



XVI 



Preface. 



obvious or plausible connection between the "duty" 
of which he speaks, and " the beliefs" which are to 
bind us to that duty. 

I can only repeat, that if I have misapprehended 
Mr Huxley, I am sorry for it : but it is a misappre- 
hension which I share with many other educated 
men, with some, I may add, of great force and clear- 
ness of intellect. 

The line taken by Mr Herbert Spencer in his Prin- 
ciples of Psychology (Part i. Chap. i. p. 48) is different, 
and perfectly fair and intelligible. He says, " It may 
safely be affirmed, that Physiology, which is an inter- 
pretation of the physical processes which go on in or- 
ganisms in terms known to natural science, ceases to 
be Physiology when it imports into its interpretations 
any psychical factor, a factor which no physical re- 
search whatever can disclose, or identify, or get the 
remotest glimpse of." This is of course simply true. 
"But," says Professor Rolleston (who quotes this 
passage in his Address on Physiology, p. 23), "I ap- 
prehend if the Physiologist wishes to become an An- 
thropologist, he must qualify himself to judge both 
sets of factors. There is other science besides Phy- 
sical Science, there are other data besides quantifiable 
data. Schleiden, a naturalist of the very first order, 
compares the Physical Philosopher {Mater ialismus 



Preface. 



xvii 



der neueren deutschen Wissenschaft, p. 48), who is 
not content with ignoring, without also denying the 
existence of a science based on the consciousness, to 
a man who, on looking into his purse and finding no 
gold there, should not be content with saying 1 1 find 
no gold here,' but should go further and say, 'there 
is no such thing as gold either here or anywhere 
else'." Is not something very like this, the error 
into which Professor Huxley has fallen? 

Mr Huxley has quoted from Hume. Let me 
quote the words of a far profounder philosopher. 
This is the admirable picture which Pascal has drawn 
of that very state of mind which is now recommended 
to us as wisdom : — 

" I know not who has placed me in the world, nor what 
the world is, nor what I myself am. My ignorance on all sub- 
jects is terrible. I do not know what my body is, or my 
senses, or my soul, and that part of myself which thinks what 
I utter, which reflects on everything, and on itself, and has no 
better knowledge of itself than of all the rest. I behold those 
appalling depths of the universe which shut me in, and I find 
myself tied to a corner of that vast space, without knowing 
why I am placed in this spot, rather than in another, nor why 
the little moment which is given me to live, has been assigned 
to me at this particular point, rather than any other in the 
whole of that eternity which has preceded me, and the whole 
of that eternity which is to follow. I see nothing but infini- 
ties on all sides which enclose me like an atom, and like a 
shadow which abideth but an instant and returneth not. All 



xviii 



Preface. 



that I know is that I must shortly die: but that of which I 
am most ignorant, is that very death from which I cannot 
escape. 

"As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I 
go, and I know only that when I leave this world, I fall for 
ever, either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God, 
without knowing to which of these two conditions I am for 
ever condemned. Behold my state, full of misery, of weakness, 
of obscurity. And from all this I conclude, that I ought to 
pass all the days of my life without a moment's reflection on 
that which shall befall me. Perchance I might find some ray 
of light to guide me in my doubts, but I will not take the 
trouble, I will not take a single step to seek it ; and after 
treating with contempt those who do engage in the task, I will 
go without forethought and without fear to encounter so great 
an event, and suffer myself to be led softly to death in utter 
uncertainty of what shall be my condition to all eternity." " How 
can a reasonable man," says Pascal, " entertain thoughts such as 
these?" "Nothing is so important to a man as his condition; 
nothing is so awful for him as eternity; and that he should be 
found indifferent to the loss of his being and to the peril of an 
eternity of miseries, is certainly not natural. The merest trifles 
will stir a man to rage and despair, and yet he can contemplate 
the loss of everything by death without an emotion. It is a prodigy 
to see in one and the same heart, at one and the same time, 
this sensibility to trifles, and this insensibility to matters of the 
weightiest import. It is an incomprehensible, preternatural 
infatuation, which must be due to some cause of irresistible 
force." (Pensees, pp. 135 — 137, ed. Havet). 

Yes ; whatever Hume and those who think with 
him may say, we cannot escape from the thought, 
the anxious and earnest investigation, of subjects such 
as these. Nor are we doomed only to barren and 



Preface. 



xix 



fruitless speculation. Not only are there other truths 
than those which fall within the province of " ab- 
stract" or " experimental reasoning/' not only are 
there higher truths, and infinitely more important, 
but they are more real, more certainly ascertainable, 
than any facts in the material world. It is not only 
the things we see, and hear, and touch, of which we 
can attain to any knowledge. The soul, God, eter- 
nity, — these realities lighted up for us by the light 
which falls on them from the words and the life of 
Christ, and borne witness to by the voices, accordant 
here, wherever else they may differ, of the purest, 
and the noblest, and the truest of our race — men, 
many of them who stand foremost in the ranks of 
intellectual distinction, as well as great with moral 
greatness — are realities which shall last when "the 
sun himself shall die." 

"Whether we be young or old, 
Our destiny, our being's heart and home, 
Is with infinity, and only there : 
With hope it is, hope that can never die, 
Effort and expectation and desire, 
And something evermore about to be." 

Wordsworth, The Prelude. 

St David's College, Lampeter, 
March 1, 1869. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 
The Future Life. 

PAGE 

Modern theories— Materialism — Pantheism — Spiritualism 1 

LECTURE II. 
The Hope of the Gentile. 
The Egyptian — the Greek — the Oriental 34 

LECTURE III. 
The Hope of the Jew 61 

LECTURE IY. 

The Hope of the Christian. 

It rests upon two facts — the Resurrection of Christ — the inner 
life of the Spirit: — The Resurrection in accordance with the 
analogies of Nature 92 

Appendix „., 121 



LECTURE I. 



THE FUTURE LIFE. 

Ecclesiastes III. 18 — 22. 

/ said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that 
God might manifest them, and that they might see that they 
themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of 
men befalleth beasts: even one thing befalleth them: as the 
one dieth, so dieth the other ; yea, they have all one breath; 
so that a man hath no 'preeminence above a beast: for all 
is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and 
all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that 
goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward 
to the earth ? Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing 
better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; 
for that is his portion : for who shall bring him to see what 
shall be after him? 

There are some questions which can never lose 
their interest, and which from time to time present 
themselves with fresh force and fascination. They 
are ever old and yet ever new ; old as the heart of 
man and yet new as the dawn of infancy. Men 
have thought they have found a solution, or have 
abandoned them in despair, and yet they start up 
and confront us again, as if they had never gained 
p. h. l. 1 



2 The Question of a Future Life [lect. 

attention, and as if no answer had been given to 
them. A new age, with new needs and a new 
science, refuses to accept the solution of a former 
age, or with fresh hope and irrepressible eagerness 
insists that the problem, which baffled the thinkers 
of the past, is not beyond the reach of the thinkers 
of the present. Among these questions, none pos- 
sesses a more universal, a more commanding interest, 
than the question of a Future Life. 

" Who knoweth whether the spirit of man goeth 
upward, and whether the spirit of the beast goeth 
dowmward to the earth ? " This was the question 
wrung from the Preacher in the bitterness of his 
thoughts, as in the absence of any clear and positive 
revelation concerning the future, he tried to read 
the riddle of the world. A selfish life had darkened 
his heart, and brought him to the verge of a sceptical 
philosophy. He was weary of the world, weary of 
the injustice which he beheld, and, ready to accept 
the conclusion that there was no moral Governor 
of the Universe, he was ready also to accept the 
conclusion that man perished like the beasts. And 
hence he took refuge inevitably in that doctrine 
which might have come from the mouth of Epicurus : 
" Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, 
than that a man should rejoice in his own works ; for 
that is his portion : for who knoweth what shall be 
after him?" Happily the Preacher did not rest in 
this solution of the problem. Happily God led him 
through the painful discipline of life, through much 



i.] one of unfailing interest in all ages. 3 

disappointment and much sadness of heart to a 
nobler faith. Happily we see him emerging from 
that tangled forest in which he had so long wan- 
dered, torn by its thickets, and poisoned by its 
miasma, and bitten by its deadly snakes, and coming 
forth into the light of God's love and truth, and 
looking with calm eye on death, and even beyond 
death, and teaching to others that lesson of highest 
wisdom which he had learnt himself : " Fear God 
and keep His commandments, for this is the whole 
of man. For God shall bring every work into judge- 
ment with every secret thing whether it be good or 
bad." 

The question of the Preacher has since then 
been put again and again. Men are never weary of 
asking it, never weary of seeking an answer. Even 
in this age, with its singularly positive spirit, with 
its utilitarian tendencies, this question is so far from 
being thrust aside, that it presents itself in quarters 
where we should least expect it. Even in this age 
which has been termed "the golden age of the 
exact sciences, and of industry, and the iron age of 
metaphysics 1 ," when men seem to have grown weary 
of abstract speculations, are almost afraid to think, 
and are absorbed in the study of facts, material re- 
sults, the practical applications of science, still the 
shadow of that other world of mystery haunts them. 
It " broods o'er them like the Day, a master o'er 
a slave," "a Presence which is not to be put by." 

1 E. Saisset. 



4 It is a question which forces itself upon us, [lect. 

They cannot escape from it. The mind most averse 
to what it considers speculative and therefore fruit- 
less researches, the heart most engrossed in the pur- 
suit of earthly good, will have its moments of awaken- 
ing, its hours of weariness and dissatisfaction, when 
some whisper of these strange problems will reach it, 
"What am I ? Whence came I ? Whither am I go- 
ing ? What is the end which awaits me ? 

These questions, arising as it were spontaneously, 
cannot but suggest others as the result of reflec- 
tion. What is my body, that admirable, but fragile 
machine which the slightest shock breaks to 
atoms % Organized matter, — the subject of hourly 
incessant changes, through which, as through a 
sieve, there passes an ever-renewed wave of chang- 
ing particles. Must there not then, if my body is 
to keep the form which constitutes it, must there 
not be in it something which has the power to hold 
it together, some hidden force, some principle of 
life ? And then besides my organic life, do I not 
perceive within me something which reasons, which 
suffers, which hopes, which rejoices, which wills, 
which wills not, a thought, a soul ? How mar- 
vellous is my nature ! A moment since, when I 
looked only at my body, I thought myself a being 
of wonderful simplicity: now I see in myself two 
beings — perhaps three ; first my body, then the 
animal life, and then beyond that life, another life 
more mysterious still. What am I then? A double 
or triple being ? or is this complication only apparent, 



i.] and one of really practical moment. 5 

thought being only a superior degree of life, and life 
only a property of organized matter ? 

When once such questions are proposed, it is dif- 
ficult to set them aside. For if I am nothing but a 
body analogous to those which I see around me, I 
shall have the end of the worm T crush, of the grass 
which I tread beneath my feet, A child of the 
dust, when I give back my bones to the dust, I shall 
give back to it all that I am. Then the philosophy 
of despair is all that is left to me; "That which be- 
falleth man befalleth beasts ; as the one dieth, so dieth 
the other." If, on the other hand, there is in me a 
principle independent of the body, then that is a true 
philosophy which says that " man is not a plant of 
the earth, but a plant of heaven" ((jyvrov ovx eyyeiov, 
aXX' ovpdviov), and then the present life, which but 
now was everything to me, is but a day, an hour, a 
moment, in sight of the eternity which awaits me. 

It is obvious that our whole life must take a co- 
louring from the conclusion at which we arrive. It 
is obvious that this is no merely theoretical question, 
however men may be disposed to treat it. It enters 
into the very heart of our being. If we are but 
children of the dust doomed to return to the dust, then 
let this world absorb our cares and bound our thoughts. 
If we are heirs of immortality, then let our life here 
be guided by those principles and shaped to those 
ends which will best fit us for the life to come. 

I propose, in this course of Lectures, to examine 
some of the grounds on which our hope of Immorta- 



6 



Scope of these Lectures. 



[lect. 



lity rests : I propose to show, that in Christ only and 
the Revelation of Christ is to be found the answer to 
the question of the text. With this object in view, I 
shall first of all glance at some of the attempts, which 
have recently been made, to answer the question, 
either in a sense adverse to Christianity, or without 
any recognition of its claims. I shall then review 
the history of belief, so far as this doctrine is con- 
cerned, first among the Pagans and next among the 
Jews. And, lastly, 1 shall hope to show that 
whereas, apart from Christianity, we are left only to 
dim guesses and uncertain conjectures, Christ Jesus 
has " brought life and immortality to light," and has 
met and satisfied the deep instincts of the human 
heart, and the hopes of the world. 

It will indeed be impossible to offer more than 
the outline of so vast a subject in the space allotted 
to these Lectures. I cannot doubt that I am speak- 
ing in the presence of some who will discover defects 
of knowledge or of method in what I shall advance. 
But as they will also know better than others, how 
widely attempts have been made, both in Germany 
and in France, on the one hand, to substitute a pan- 
theistic absorption for the hope of a personal immor- 
tality, and on the other hand, to overthrow all 
belief in the existence of the soul after death ; and how 
such doctrines have been welcomed and propagated, 
in our own country, by men who claim to be thinkers 
and philosophers, they will feel that some attempt to 
grapple with this question is not out of place, and 



i.] The theory of Materialism. 7 



they will show some indulgence to what does not 
profess to be more than a fragmentary contribution 
to the subject. 

" Who knoweth whether the spirit of man goeth 
upward, and whether the spirit of the beast goeth 
downward to the earth 1 ?" Let us glance at some of 
the answers which, in our own day, have been given 
to this question. I shall select three by way of 
illustration; that-of the Materialist, that of the Pan- 
theist, and that of the so-called Spiritualist, who 
rejects revelation. 

I. There is, first, the answer of the Materialist, 
who tells you that beyond the grave there is nothing, 
that this life is all. He maintains that his philoso- 
phy must be true, because it is based entirely upon 
facts. He says that he has laid bare the secrets of 
man's nature, and that its component parts are the 
same as the component parts of all other objects in 
the universe. He assures you that there are but two 
things in the world, matter and force, and that nei- 
ther of these can exist apart from the other. "No 
force without matter, and no matter without force 2 ;" 
this is the first brief and pregnant and comprehensive 
axiom of materialism. " Forces," says an eminent 
physiologist 3 , "are not harnessed to matter as horses 
are to a chariot, which you can put in or take out at 
pleasure." Each material molecule has its inherent 

1 1 have adopted what I believe to be the better rendering of the verse. 

2 Biichner, Kraft und Staff. 

3 Du Bois-Reyniond, quoted by Biichner. See also P. Janet, Le 
Materialisme Co?itemporain, p. 20. 



8 



The theory of Materialism. [lect. 



properties, from which it can never be separated. 
"A particle of iron is the same thing whether it 
traverse the universe in the aerolite, or roll in thun- 
der on the railroad, or circulate in the blood-globule 
in the temples of a poet." Hence it follows that the 
idea of a creative force, separate from matter, govern- 
ing it according to fixed laws, is a pure abstraction. 
To maintain the existence of such a force is to trans- 
form an occult quality into an absolute being. Mat- 
ter and force are inseparable; matter and force have 
existed from all eternity ; matter and force constitute 
the universe, and constitute man. 

This is all that there is in man, the material ele- 
ments of which his body is composed, and the forces 
which have helped to build up that body. What 
then, according to this theory, is the soul? It is an 
organic function of the body, whose seat is in the 
brain. Rejecting the monstrous and self-contradic- 
tory theory of some earlier materialists 1 , according 
to which thought is a secretion cf the brain, later 
physiologists prefer to say that thought is the action 
of the brain : and the action of the steam-engine 
must not be confounded with the steam which puts 
the engine in motion. Thought is the resultant of 
all the forces united in the brain. This resultant 
cannot be seen ; it is, according to all appearance, 
but the effect of nervous electricity. " There is the 
same relation," says one writer, "between thought 

1 As for instance Cabanis. The abuse of the term "secretion" is 
obvious. For a refutation of this theory see E. Naviile, La Vie Eter- 
nelle, p. 65. 



I.] Thought a movement of matter. 9 

and the electric vibrations of the filaments of the 
brain as between colour and the vibrations of the 
ether." Finally, the whole doctrine has been sum- 
med up in these words — " Thought is a movement 
of matter 1 ." In short, the thesis of materialism is 
this, that beyond matter and the laws of matter 
there is nothing, and that consequently mechanics, 
chemistry, physiology, suffice to explain all pheno- 
mena, the production of thought as well as the pro- 
duction of the flame of a candle, the sentiments of the 
human heart, as well as the colour and weight of a 
stone or a tree. 

A conclusion such as this, which breaks down 
the eternal barriers between mind and matter, and 
which boldly says they are one, ought not to be 
received without the strictest proof. And what is the 
proof which is offered ? It is of this kind. The brain 
is the seat and the organ of thought ; wherever we 
find a brain, there we find a thinking being, or one, 
at least, in some degree intelligent. Wherever the 
brain is wanting, intelligence and thought are equally 
wanting. There is, moreover, a constant ratio be- 
tween the development of the brain and the develop- 
ment of the mind. They increase and decrease 
together; what affects the one, affects the other also. 
Age, disease, the difference of the sexes, have an 
exactly corresponding influence upon the brain and 
upon the mind. There is an invariable relation 
between the brain, which is the organ of thought, 

1 Moleschott. 



10 The assumptions of Materialism. [lect. 



and the thought itself, and therefore the brain is the 
cause of thought 1 . 

But, unfortunately for this conclusion, not one of 
the three propositions on which it rests can be said 
to be proved. The last is certainly contested by some 
of the most eminent physiologists 2 . Science has yet 
vast strides to make before it can establish with cer- 
tainty the relation between the brain and thought. 
Some of the foremost of modern authorities declare 
that the physiology of the brain is yet in its infancy 3 , 
and that the relations between the brain and thought 
are absolutely unknown. Who knows what takes 
place in the nervous extremities, along the nerves, 
and in the substance of the brain, when we receive, 
for instance, the impression of light or that of sound ? 
Who knows what the condition of the brain is at 
the moment when the will becomes the principle of a 
moment ? But suppose you could discover this. 
Suppose you could ascertain the last fact in the ner- 
vous system in the order of impressions, and the 
first fact in the nervous system in the order of the 

1 See P. Janet, Le Mater . Contemp. pp. 30, 31 -and 116, 117. 

2 As for instance Lelut, La Pfajstologie de la Pensee, and by 
Leuret and Gratiolet, L* Anatomie Comparee du Systeme Nerveux. 
See P. Janet, as above. 

3 Even the differences of structure between the brain of man and 
that of the lower animals is still a subject of dispute. According to 
Bischoff, "our knowledge of the finer structural relations and the 
chemical composition of the brain is still very imperfect." A remark 
which however he qualifies by saying, that "much as there is marvellous 
and mysterious in the physical life of men and beasts, the structure of 
the brain contains quite as many marvels and mysteries." Ulrici, Got I 
und der Mensch. i. 73. 



i.] The assumptions of Materialism. 11 

will. Suppose that long and patient study shall at 
last have discovered the secret, shall at last have led 
to the knowledge that to a particular sentiment, a 
particular thought, a particular act of the will, there 
corresponds such a vibration of the fibres, such a 
discharge of electricity, such a combination of phos- 
phorus. "What follows? Would such a result 
of the science be of any service to materialism ? 
Assuredly not. All that science will have done in 
that case, will be to have established in detail the 
close and intimate union of two orders of phenomena 
in their nature absolutely unlike. And the conclu- 
sion of materialism will be — these phenomena are 
linked together: therefore they are of the same 
nature. Thought, feeling, will, are always in har- 
mony with a given condition of the material organs ; 
therefore thought, feeling, will, are properties or pro- 
ducts of matter. The sophism is always the same. 
It consists in saying : these facts correspond to one 
another, they are closely united, therefore there are 
not two facts, there is only one 1 . It is like saying 
the magnetic force is always found in the loadstone; 
therefore the magnetic force is the product of the 
loadstone. Materialism, when it identifies the mani- 
festations of the soul with the phenomena of the 
body, flings a rope across the chasm, and then declares 
that the chasm no longer exists. 

And as the materialist takes for granted in his 

1 E. Naville, La Vie Eternelle, pp. 63—6 ; and see also Appendix, 
Note A. 



12 The materialist disregards some of [lect. 

own science what he has to prove, and draws infer- 
ences which are not warrantable, if his premises 
were granted, so he altogether shuts his eyes to those 
other facts, with which neither the anatomist's knife, 
nor the chemist's crucible can deal. If you attempt 
to confront him with the inner facts of human nature, 
with the thoughts and anticipations of the human 
heart, he will tell you calmly these form no part of 
his study, that either a thing is reconcilable with 
reason and experience and then it is true, or it is not 
so reconcilable and then it is false; it can find no 
place in any system of philosophy. Insist on it that 
there is a deep inextinguishable desire of immortality 
in the human heart, and that the very thought of 
annihilation is repugnant to man ; and he will reply 
— I quote words actually used — that the thought 
of an everlasting life is infinitely more terrible, 
that for himself he does not hesitate for an instant 
to prefer everlasting annihilation to everlasting life 1 . 
Such a perpetuity of existence, such an impossi- 
bility of dying is the most awful thing the human 
imagination can invent : — if you would picture it 
to yourself in all its awfulness, you have only to 
think of it as it has been conceived and pourtrayed 
in the story of the never-dying, ever- wandering Jew. 
And, indeed, on his principles he is right, for he 
who denies the Being of a God, may well shudder at 
the thought of immortality ; for, think for a moment 
of a community of beings, like ourselves, each one 

1 Buchuer, Kraft und Stoff, p. 212 



i.] the most important facts of human nature. 1 3 

continuing for ever, each one following his own 
selfish path, each one without guide or governor, 
each one the blind slave of his own caprice, or 
humour, or desperate desire ; think of human pride 
and passion and hate suffered to prolong their malig- 
nant being to all eternity, unchecked and unre- 
strained. Who does not feel that annihilation 
is indeed to be courted, rather than immortality 
without God ? If, urging that moral argument 
which has weighed with so many pure and noble 
thinkers, you say that we need, that we imperatively 
require, another world to redress the inequalities of 
this life, a world where the mysteries which haunt 
and perplex us now shall receive their solution ; the 
answer of the materialist is, that it may be we are 
surrounded with mystery, it may be that it would 
be delightful if in heaven, as in the last act of some 
moving drama, all the discords of earth should be 
resolved into some sweet tender soul-subduing har- 
mony, all the perplexities and riddles of life find their 
adequate solution ; but science has nothing to do with 
what may be, her business lies only with what is, and 
that facts numerous and unquestionable drive us to 
the conclusion that man perishes like the beasts 1 . 
Speak to him of duty, of saintly devotion, of heroic 
self-sacrifice, of love, so pure, so high, so heavenly, 
that it gives itself in spite of baseness and treachery, 
covering all sins with its own glory and asking no 
return ; tell him of the might of genius which creates 

1 So for instance, Biichner, Kraft und Stoff. 



14 



Failure of Materialism. 



[lect. 



an ideal world, and the might of philanthropy which 
re-creates the moral world, and ask him if he believes 
that such things are no more than the dance of insects 
in the dying day, and he will wonder that you should 
see in these any evidence that the soul comes from 
God, and returns to God ; they are but so many pulsa- 
tions of the material machine, to be quenched with 
it, when it falls to dust, in everlasting night. And if 
you enquire what hope is left you in the struggle 
of life, he will perhaps reply, that duty is its own 
reward, that your best hope is in the progress of the 
race, and he will give you the assurance that when 
you die there is nothing lost to the universe, not 
one particle of the elements of which your body was 
composed, not one of the forces which built it up. 
Matter and force may be transmuted, but they cannot 
perish ; and with solemn irony he will proclaim to you 
this gospel of consolation, that neither matter nor 
force can die, and bid you find there the immortality 
for which you seek. The answer which the Preacher 
gave to his own heart, in the hour of his scepticism 
and despondency, is the only true and satisfactory 
answer to man's self-torturing spirit : " Man hath no 
pre-eminence above the beast. As the one dieth, so 
dieth the other. All are of the dust, and all turn to 
dust again." 

Entrenched within these double lines, of infer- 
ences too hastily drawn from one class of facts, 
and of absolute blindness to another class of facts, 
Materialism is hard to be dislodged. Happily, how- 



The Pantheistic theory. 



15 



ever, such a theory of human nature carries with it its 
own condemnation. We need not the light of the 
Gospel of J esus Christ, my brethren, to show us its 
falseness. The facts of man's nature are a witness 
against it, the constitution of the world is a witness 
against it. And they must indeed be in love with 
death, who can look without shrinking on the anni- 
hilation which is thus offered to us as our only hope. 
Such a creed assuredly will never be popular. The 
heart of man and the conscience of man will raise 
their everlasting protest against this cruel degrada- 
tion ; the natural majesty of man lifts itself up, as 
if with a sense of wrong and insult, when you thus 
strip the crown from its head, and in spite of all your 
efforts to debase and dethrone it, asserts its high 
lineage as an heir of immortality. 

II. But besides the answer of the Materialist, 
another answer has been given to the question of the 
Preacher which at first sight seems far more hopeful, 
far more attractive. For many minds it unquestionably 
possesses a peculiar fascination. This is the answer 
of Pantheism. Pantheism does not rob us of one 
part of our nature. Pantheism acknowledges the 
rights and the dignity of the human soul. It assures 
you that the soul came from God and returns to 
God. But as it does not acknowledge a Personal 
God, so it does not truly recognize a personal soul. 
It maintains that there is in each of us that divine 
thing which cannot die, but that divine thing is but 
a portion of the great informing, self-evolving Spi- 



16 The immortality of Pantheism. [lect. 

rit. Separated for a moment from the whole, the 
individual phenomenon returns to the whole. Ac- 
cording to the well-known figure of the Eastern 
poet, the drop from the Fountain of Life, which has 
been enshrined in the frail crystal globe, only exists, 
as long as that globe exists, as a separate drop. 
When that globe is shattered, it will mingle again 
with the Fountain whence it came. 

This is the immortality of Pantheism, this is the 
eternal life which it offers. The soul does not die, 
the spirit does not perish, the separate drop does 
but mingle with its native ocean. Nothing is lost. 
But is it the fact that nothing is lost ? Is the loss 
of the individual consciousness no loss ? Is the 
extinction of personality nothing ? On the contrary, 
is not everything involved in this ? The substance, 
the metaphysical base of my being you tell me 
remains, it is only my separate existence which has 
come to an end. But if the life of consciousness, of 
thought, of feeling, if that which distinguished me 
from others is gone, swallowed up in the universal, 
unconscious, undistinguishable spirit-sea, in what 
respect does this differ from annihilation and death ? 
For if it be true, ' 1 think, therefore I am,' it must 
also be true, 1 1 cease to think, therefore I cease to 
be/ What reparation do you make, what consola- 
tion do you offer, when you assure me that my sub- 
stance cannot perish ? My substance ? I have 
ceased to be, I have no substance any longer, You 
hold out to me the fair vision of immortal life. But 



i.] Pantheism destroys our personality. 17 

what life ? Whose life ? Not my life, for it is no 
longer mine. I and my personal history come to an 
end with death. The consciousness at least of all I 
have been is swept away. What once belonged to me 
may remain, but it remains in a form which I am 
no longer able to recognize, in a form which does 
not possess even a shadowy outline of being, in a 
form for which I am unable to feel even one passing 
emotion of interest 1 . This abstract notion of immor- 
tality, even if it were possible, is not worth contend- 
ing for. It could give no strength to the heart in the 
trials of life, it could not shield it against the terrors 
of death. 

There is one and one only immortality which can 
be of any interest to me, the immortality of my 
individual self. There is that in me, of which I am 
conscious, and of which none other shares the con- 
sciousness with me. Shall I, — will that particular 
soul which has felt and thought and suffered and 
loved and acted and struggled, during a life of longer 

1 By precisely the same method of reasoning the immortality of the 
body might be made out. For when the body perishes and turns to its 
dust, not a single particle of it is lost. The substance is not destroyed ; 
it merely returns back to the mass from which it was taken, earth to 
earth, dust to dust, and a new life springs from the mouldering carcase. 
But would it be reasonable therefore to maintain that the body is im- 
mortal ? Is this return of the constituent particles of the body to the 
great mass of universal matter anything else but death ? Can I persuade 
myself that my body does not perish because every particle of it remains, 
though under other conditions, and in different forms of combination ? 
If any one can find a consolation in such a reflection, he may perhaps 
console himself with the thought that his soul is immortal, though it is 
lost and swallowed up in the vast ocean of universal soul. 

P. H. L. 2 



18 Yet lays claim to a certain moral grandeur, [lect. 

or shorter duration, — will this, I say, survive the 
shock of death ? Will this continue, — the memory 
of its former self unimpaired ? Will this retain the 
character, the physiognomy, so to speak, which it 
has created for itself distinct and separate ? This is 
the only immortality which can touch my heart. 
But strip the soul of all that is distinctive, of thought, 
of feeling, of will, and tell me that its substance 
survives, and you leave me as insensible to my 
future destiny, as if you had preached to me annihi- 
lation. 

Yet strange to say, in the very act of rob- 
bing us of personal immortality, Pantheism claims 
for itself all the greatness of moral elevation. It 
contrives to throw over its scheme of existence, all 
the charm, all the fascination of self-sacrifice. It 
tells you that the popular theology, with its system 
of rewards and punishments after death, appeals 
only to the lower part, to the unreasoning instinct, 
to the selfish principles of our nature. It tells you 
that the very desire for the existence of the indivi- 
dual after death is a selfish desire. It bids you dis- 
card that 1 sentimental tenderness for the individual 
I? It is far nobler to reconcile yourself to share the 
common lot, even though it be a lot of destruction, 
to resign willingly that brief space of personal exist- 
ence which has been allotted you, when you have 
fulfilled its ephemeral purpose. And in the mean 
time it assures you, that you have a far better immor- 
tality, than that vague and distant and chimerical 



i.] It offers a present immortality. 19 

immortality to which you aspire. It offers you a 
present immortality, one that is real, one that may 
be grasped by each one of us at any moment. It is 
not a form of the future life, it is a form of the pre- 
sent life. It is to be realized on one single condi- 
tion, that in thought we unite ourselves with the 
Eternal Principle, with the Absolute Substance of 
things. This it is which makes us divine. This it is 
which secures for us our immortality. It is childish 
to look for an eternal life beyond the grave. When 
we recognize our dependence, when we feel ourselves 
cradled and upheld on the bosom of the Eternal sub- 
stance, which for a single moment holds our frail 
personality suspended over the abyss of nothing, 
then we possess the only true immortality. There 
is none other for man, all else is but a dream and an 
illusion. " The thought of immortality," says one 
writer, "is immortality." "The true heaven," says 
another, "is in the spirit, the thought, the human 
consciousness, that sublime mirror in which univer- 
sal life is reflected and transfigured." "Heaven," 
says a third, "is within us. Oar future existence is 
realized every moment. The individual has bat one 
existence, but it depends on himself to enlarge its 
circle by extending the horizon of his soul. Each 
man is the artificer of his own life and his own im- 
mortality, because he is the artificer of his own pro- 
gress." 

Now observe the consequence which follows 



20 The law of recompense fulfilled here. [lect. 

directly from this view. The law of recompense, 
which is one of the most essential elements of the 
future life, is marvellously fulfilled in this world. 
Each one has that immortality which he merits. 
The distribution is infallible, because that which 
constitutes in each of us this immortality, that which 
fixes the degree of it, is exactly the perfection to 
which we attain. He is immortal in the fullest sense 
who has most realized the Divine, in his life or in 
his thoughts, by knowledge or by virtue. All that 
is good in his life, all that is true in his thoughts, 
this it is which establishes his participation in the 
Eternal. The measure therefore of this knowledge 
and this virtue are the measure of his immortality. 
They, on the other hand, are altogether excluded 
from this divine life who fall down into the world 
of appearance, who separate themselves from the 
Universal Principle, whether by the baseness of 
their actions, or the baseness of their thoughts, who 
give themselves up a prey to unworthy desires, to 
selfish pleasures, to the humiliating tyranny of the 
senses. It is not God who banishes these men 
from Himself, it is they who banish themselves 
from Him. At every step that they take away 
from truth their thought becomes darkened, the 
taste of divine things is extinguished in them, till 
they reach the last deep of misery and degradation, 
which is to have no longer any sense of the divine 
at all. They live in time which is the true death, 



i.] Likeness and unlikeness to Christianity. 21 

instead of living in the thought of things eternal, 
which is the true, the only immortality 1 . 

Now, apart from a certain stoic grandeur which 
unquestionably lends much of its attractiveness to 
this Pantheistic scheme, do we not seem to hear 
running through it certain echoes, however faint 
and confused, of the strains of a higher and more 
heavenly harmony? Might we not almost dream 
for a moment that its hope is the Christian's hope, 
its triumph the Christian's triumph? How like 
they are and yet how unlike! 

For Christianity like Pantheism holds out to us 
union with God, the Everlasting Fountain of Life, as 
the highest object of attainment; but, unlike Panthe- 
ism, Christianity teaches, that the God in whom we 
live and move and have our being is not an abstrac- 
tion, but a Person, not the Eternal Substance, but 
the Eternal Father. Christianity like Pantheism bids 
us find the best evidence of our immortality in this 
union with God, but unlike Pantheism she bids us 
attain to it, not by "the thought of immortality," 
but by faith in Jesus Christ. Christianity like Pan- 
theism insists upon it, that eternal life is a present 
possession, but unlike Pantheism she no less empha- 
tically assures to the individual an individual per- 
manence after death, and a righteous retribution 
according to the deeds done in the body. But there 
is one point, on which it cannot be pretended, that 

1 For the substance of the last two paragraphs I am indebted to 
Caro, Video de Dieu, p. 370, &c. 



22 Pantheism makes immortality [lect. 

even any shadow of likeness exists, between the 
immortality of the Pantheist and the immortality 
of the Christian. There is one point in which the 
divergence between the two is marked, absolute, 
final. On the principles which Pantheism lays down, 
there is no immortality but for the elite of humanity. 
If the sense of immortality is immortality, and if I 
am eternal because I think of the eternal, then 
there is no immortality for the crowd. There is no 
future life but for thinkers. It is not the inalienable 
heritage of the race, it is the prerogative and privi- 
lege of the few. And we must add of the very 
few. For if immortality depends not only upon 
our thought of God, but upon our thought of so 
abstract a being as the God of Pantheism, and if our 
share of eternity depends on the development which 
we give to this idea, then the majority of mankind 
is for ever robbed of all right to eternal life. The 
poor, the wretched, the struggling, the vulgar and 
ignoble crowd, who are doomed to eat their bread 
in the sweat of their brow, these are not worthy of 
so great a gift. The multitudes who, because they 
have the hearts of men, look to heaven in their sor- 
row, and cry to God above, to give them hereafter the 
peace and rest which are denied them here, are full 
of aspirations, as vain and mistaken, as they are sel- 
fish. The wail of anguish which has gone up into the 
ear of God ever since the world was made, and to 
which men have so often thought they heard an 
answer, has but been mocked and derided. There 



i.] the 'privilege of an intellectual aristocracy. 23 

is no answer. There is no hope. "I can see no 
reason/' says a recent writer, " why a Papuan should 
be immortal 1 ." But if the fundamental principle 
of all Pantheism be true, there is no reason why 
ninety and nine in a hundred of the human race 
should be immortal. Immortality is the privilege 
of an intellectual aristocracy, and it is a privilege 
which they make for themselves; for they create 
their own immortality. 

I need scarcely remind you, how wide is the 
divergence between such a scheme, and the message 
of the Gospel, with its large hopes and glorious 
promises embracing al] mankind. It is emphatically 
the glory of the Gospel that it addresses itself to 
the universal heart. It knows no distinction, when 
it makes the offer and gives us the warrant of eter- 
nal life, between the peasant and the sage. But 
keenly alive to the miseries, the sorrows, the suffer- 
ings, the fears, the hopes of the race, it addresses 
itself to all alike. It confirms the just instincts of 
the heart, it ratifies the verdict of the conscience. It 
leaves no cloud on man's future destiny. f 'To them 
who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for 
honour, and glory, and immortality," it promises 
" eternal life." But " to them who obey not the truth" 
it threatens " indignation and wrath, tribulation and 
anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil." 

III. Materialism slays our hope. Pantheism 
mocks us with a false hope. But it must not be for- 

1 Renan, Essais de Morale et de Critique. 



24 



Spiritualism appeals [lect. 



gotten that there are teachers of a better philosophy, 
who, without professing to accept the Christian revela- 
tion, have striven to establish on sure grounds our 
hopes of immortality. They have given no doubtful 
answer to the question of the Preacher. They 
have adopted his later and better language. They 
have maintained that when the body falls into dust, 
the spirit returns to God who gave it, and they have 
sought to establish at the same time its distinct 
personality. And the grounds on which they en- 
courage us to build our hopes of a future life have 
with some minds considerable weight. They appeal 
first to the constitution of man, and next to the con- 
stitution of the world L . 

i. They appeal first to the constitution of man. 
If man is destined to a life beyond the grave, then if 
God is wise and good and righteous, He has written 
in human nature some prophecy of that life. 

(i) Look, then, at the heart of man, see how 
vast a thing is human love. Conceive of it in 
any form you please, the love of family, the love of 
father, child, wife, friends ; or the love of art, or 
glory, or country, or mankind. "Whence comes that 
marvellous force of love ? It is not the object which 
creates the love, for the heart may set itself upon 

1 In what follows, I am greatly indebted to Jules Simon, Religion 
Naturelte, who thinks that he has demonstrated from such consider- 
ations the immortality of the soul. Strange to say, he takes no noiice of 
the argument from conscience, which to other thinkers appears the 
strongest of all. See M'Cosh, Method of the Divine Government, 
p. 514, sixth edition. 



i.] to the constitution of man. 25 

an unworthy object, and the object which to one 
seems loveliest may possess no attractions for others. 
It is the love which clothes the object with ideal 
loveliness. Nothing shows more strikingly than 
this fact that we are something in ourselves, that we 
do not depend entirely upon our senses, and upon 
the outer world. Look above all at that soul which 
lavishes itself without one thought of self, which 
only lives and breathes for the happiness of another, 
which thinks no sacrifice too great, which cannot be 
disenchanted, wilich death cannot rob altogether, 
which even treachery and contempt cannot alienate, 
which sheds all its treasures of affection on a de- 
formed body, a sickly spirit, an ungrateful heart. 
Is that mighty force of love no more than the flame 
of a candle which at last goes out in the socket ? 
Nay more, when rising above the works of God 
to God Himself, love fastens itself immediately on 
the supreme object of love, shall it be frustrated in 
its hopes ? Shall that love, at once so holy and so 
strong, be for ever shattered by death ? Shall God 
never show himself? Shall God never give Him- 
self? Shall that which seemed the most real tiring 
in life, prove only to be a deception and a torture ? 
No, the heart of man prophesies his immortality. 

(2) Look again at the intellect of man. This 
likewise is too large for the world ; eternity is in 
-its eye, and upon its forehead. How " confined and 
pestered " it is " within the pinfold " of the body ! 
How it strives to vanquish space and to triumph 



26 The argument for a Future Life drawn [lect. 

over time. How it ranges through the past and 
anticipates the future. How boldly it endeavours to 
gather all phenomena however scattered into the 
common unity of Universal laws. Does it not seek 
to grasp eternity ? Does it not desire to know God? 
And does not every fresh discovery that we make 
call forth in us, as it were a new power, impelling 
us, with ever fresh and sustained ardour, on the path 
of further investigations ? Can we recognize in such 
facts no footsteps of a Divine purpose ? Shall we 
only behold afar off the Promised Land, and never 
be suffered to enter into its borders ? Surely the 
intellect of man, like the heart of man, prophesies his 
immortality. 

(3) Once more, look at the conscience of man. 
Is there not a Law to which we involuntarily do 
homage ? Do we not know and feel that there is an 
Eternal Right which claims our allegiance 1 And 
do we not strive to render that allegiance, whilst 
we are ever painfully conscious that we fall far short 
of its just and acknowledged demands ? It is of no 
consequence to the argument what view we told as 
to the origin or the education of Conscience. It is 
the fact that such an authority exists, that such an 
authority is felt to be binding. There is implied, in 
every recognition of duty the sense of a law, "and 
therefore, we instinctively feel, of a Lawgiver, who 
is also a Judge, and who will punish the transgres- 
sion of duty. Conscience reminds us of perpetual 
failure, short coming, transgression, and conscience 



i.] from the heart, the intellect and the conscience. 27 

sets before us the penalty, and not content with the 
retribution here extends it into the world to come. 
It is not merely the Christian conscience which thus 
speaks, it is the conscience of all men. St Paul 
scarcely describes more feelingly, than many a hea- 
then moralist and poet, the terrible disruption of the 
inner man, the knowledge of the Law and the obe- 
dience to appetite, the sense of right and the slavery 
to evil. Christianity scarcely speaks more clearly, 
than many a heathen religion, of the retribution 
which the Righteous Judge shall mete out on the 
final day of reckoning. "Every man feels," it has 
been said, " as if he had at the end of his earthly 
career to appear before his Governor, and as if there 
was to be a reckoning at the close of the day of life. 
The time and manner of the judgment are unknown, 
but the judgment itself and the law are so far re- 
vealed. There is a feeling of this kind originating in 
deep internal principles, and strengthened by the 
observation of retribution in the providence of God, 
haunting mankind all through their life, and coming 
on them impressively at a dying hour. Such a day 
of account evidently implies a future world, and a 
separate state 1 ." 

But this is not the only part of the witness of 
conscience. There is the witness which arises from 
the sincere effort to obey, as well as the witness from 
a sense of opposition to the law. All these honest, 
broken, imperfect struggles, ever baffled, ever dis- 

1 M'Cosh, as quoted above. 



28 Argument from the Conscience. [lect. 

appointed, are they all without meaning, and with- 
out aim ? If the very fragmentariness of human 
hopes, and efforts and aspirations, may be taken 
as any indication, that the heart and the intellect 
shall ultimately find their completeness, much more 
may we argue, that the highest part of man's nature 
is not intended to be always stunted and deformed. 
The knowledge of God, and obedience to God were 
not intended to be imperfect. Most surely the day 
will come when " we shall know even as we are 
known/' when we shall "be perfect, even as our 
Father which is in heaven is perfect." The consci- 
ence of man, more clearly than heart or intellect, 
prophesies his immortality. 

Such is the appeal made by the advocates 
of Natural Religion to the constitution of man. 
They appeal to the heart of man with its mighty 
capacity of love never satisfied till it has laid hold 
on God. They appeal to the intellect of man with 
its mighty capacities of knowledge, never satisfied 
save as it seeks to track the ways of God. They 
appeal to the conscience of man, that witness to an 
Eternal Hight, ever acknowledging the authority 
of God, ever struggling more or less imperfectly 
to fulfil His will, yet ever, as it falls short, confessing 
that hereafter, if not here, His will shall be done upon 
earth even as it is in heaven. Thus the heart of 
man, and the intellect of man, and the conscience of 
man, alike refuse to accept the sentence of annihila- 
tion. 



i.] From the constitution of the world. 29 

ii. Not less convincing is the argument drawn 
from the constitution of the world. There is evil 
in the world, physical evil and moral evil. And 
evil cries out against the power or the goodness or 
the justice of God. Physical evil is not difficult to 
account for ; nor yet the mere fact that some portion 
of evil attaches to us as created beings. We must 
be imperfect. It would be absurd to complain that 
God, who has made us in His image, has not made 
us His equals. But it is not so easy to understand 
why God, who has given us all the same nature, the 
same name, the same destiny, has not given us all 
the same means and opportunities of success, that He 
has made one poor and another rich, that He has set 
the imperishable crown of genius on the head of one, 
and has given to another a degree of intelligence 
scarcely above that of the brutes, that He assigns 
to each, in such unequal measure, his portion of good 
and evil, filling the cup of one to the brim with 
every pleasure that can gratify the sense, taking 
away from another, by an arbitrary sentence, health, 
honour, wife, children, all that makes life sweet, 
all that supports and strengthens and consoles. No 
stoic philosophy can charm us into insensibility to 
these facts. But this inequality in the distribution 
of good and evil weighs upon us far more heavily, 
when we see the good man bowed down with unde- 
served misery, and the sinner prosperous and tri- 
umphant. It is a shock to the best part of our 
nature to witness such contradictions. It would 



30 Present imperfection suggests a Future Life. [lect. 

crush us, if we were to believe, that they shall be for 
ever without redress. It is quite true that, the good 
man would love goodness apart from future recom- 
pense, but so long as there is the sense of justice 
in his heart, you can never bring him to believe, 
that wickedness deserves success and goodness de- 
feat. If we can form any true idea of righteousness, 
and if God is righteous, then who will pretend to 
say, that in the present constitution of the world His 
righteousness is fully vindicated ? The hard, grasp- 
ing, money-loving, money-getting man, who grinds 
the faces of the poor, and rises to affluence on the 
stepping-stones of human lives, is prosperous and 
honoured, and takes his seat in Parliament, and fares 
sumptuously every day, and is buried magnificently, 
and has a proud epitaph on his tomb. And the 
poor Lazarus at his gate, starving and with scarcely 
a rag to cover him, sees his wife and children pining 
with sickness and hunger before his eyes, and drags 
his miserable existence to an end, with no hand to 
smooth his pillow. The proud and delicate and 
highborn woman lives her easy, fashionable, luxuri- 
ous life, insensible to every claim but the claim of 
her own vanity ; and in yon miserable garret, her 
poor sister is toiling through the long hours of a 
winter's night, with weary eyes and weary heart, 
the fatal flush on her cheek, and the sharp quick 
^ough shaking her to pieces, and the hot tear in her 
eye as she feels her strength failing, and so she 
sinks, unknown and uncared for, into her early grave. 



l.j Insufficiency of Natural Religion. 31 

Who can believe that there we see the end of the 
tragedy ? It is not poetry, it is the divinest justice, 
it is the truest truth, which gives us to see in the 
other world the reverse of the picture : " And now 
he is comforted and thou art tormented." Yes, 
either there is no justice and therefore no God, or 
there is a life to come, in which the naked horror 
of wickedness shall appear, stript alike of its covering 
and its pre-eminence, and the pure beauty of good- 
ness shall be everlastingly revealed. 

By these and other like arguments, men have 
sought, even apart from Revelation, to build up and 
confirm their hope of Immortality. But it cannot 
be said, whatever those who advance them may 
claim for them, that such arguments make a future 
life certain. They do unquestionably confirm the 
instinctive hope of the human heart. They make a 
future life not improbable, but they do not prove it : 
they leave us still with a doubt in our hearts and 
a perhaps trembling on our lips. So far as they are 
strong, it is because in a degree which we little sus- 
pect, we bring them in aid of our Christian faith: 
but apart from that faith they have no solid ground. 
Take away the Christian truth of a resurrection, 
assured to us by the Resurrection of Christ, and 
these arguments lose their force. You are left in 
a world of shadows. You are struggling in vain 
to assure yourself of your personal existence here- 
after. The immortality of the soul is a phantom 
which eludes your eager grasp. Natural religion 



32 Practical hearing upon ourselves. [lect. 

can never make a future life certain : such arp- 
ments as I have mentioned are only corroborative of 
a foregone conclusion. The Christian doctrine of 
the Resurrection, as I shall hope hereafter to show, 
alone meets the instincts of the human heart, alone 
satisfies us both of existence and of recompense after 
death. 

Meanwhile, what is it to us, my brethren, that 
we possess that Revelation of Life and Immortality 
unless we are walking in the light thereof? What is 
it to us that the Son of God has come, and having 
in our flesh died and risen again, is our Precursor 
in the path of Immortality, unless in the strength of 
His life we are triumphing over sin and death ? We 
may indeed reject the Materialist's creed. We may 
profess to look upon it with horror and aversion. 
Those words which we have been taught to repeat 
from our earliest years, linked with so many holy 
associations, " I believe in the Resurrection of the 
body, and the life everlasting," may linger still like 
some echo of a far off world in our minds, and we 
may not be able, — God forbid we ever should be able, 
— to make deliberate shipwreck of our Christian 
faith. But they may, alas ! have lost their hold upon 
us. The materialism of the senses, or the material- 
ism of the intellect, may have enslaved and enthralled 
us, till, having brought ourselves to live like the 
brutes, we may even desire to perish like the brutes. 
If this be so with any here, may God open their 
eyes to their folly, ere it be too late. May He teach 



i.] Of the -belief in a Future Life, 33 

us to know that for all our human life, for every act, 
every word, every thought, He will bring us into 
judgment. May He rouse and sober and solemnize 
us. May He give us grace " to cast away the works 
of darkness and put upon us the armour of light," 
that quickened by His life we may stand erect before 
Him, in the full consciousness of our high privilege 
as sons of grace, heirs of God, and " candidates for 
Immortality." 



p. H. L. 



3 



LECTURE II. 



THE HOPE OF THE GENTILE. 

2 Timothy I. 10. 

. . . Who hath abolished Death, and brought Life and Immortality 
to light through the Gospel. 

In my last Lecture I glanced at some of those phi- 
losophical systems which, having their origin later 
than Christianity, profess to deal with the problem 
of a Future Life. 

I purpose in this Lecture briefly to pass in review 
some of the doctrines of heathen religions, and some 
of the speculations of heathen philosophers on the 
Life to come. In the religious system, we may re- 
cognize the voice of man's heart and conscience; in 
the philosophical speculation, we shall trace the effort 
to give certainty to the instincts of nature by the 
aid of reason and experience. We shall observe — 
however it may be accounted for — that there is for the 
most part a growth and development of belief. The 
primary, elemental belief, that death is not the end 



lect. ii.] Growth of a belief in a Future Life. 35 

of man, may be said to be as wide as the human 
race. Even in such systems as those of Buddha 
and Confucius, which have sometimes been held 
either formally to deny, or at any rate to pass by 
in silence a life beyond the grave, there may be 
found traces of such a belief, and whatsoever the 
sage may have held, or the philosopher have thought, 
there can be no doubt as to the popular persuasion. 
The worship of ancestors in China, the infinite series 
of transmigrations through which the Buddhist 
must pass, before he can hope to attain Nirvana, 
are witnesses to that indestructible instinct of the 
human heart, which refuses to admit the annihila- 
tion of so divine a thing as man. But this universal, 
ineradicable belief has assumed a variety of different 
forms. Its first and simplest expression has been 
in the respect shown for the dead, in the interment, 
in the treasuring of the ashes in the urn, in the 
tomb however simple and unadorned. Its first at- 
tempt to conceive of another life has been by 
assigning to the soul a form, and by imagining, that 
the pursuits and occupations of the next world were 
a mere continuation of the pursuits and occupations 
of the present world. In a later stage of culture, 
when the moral problems of life have begun to 
press more heavily, and the moral sense has been 
more keenly exercised, we see men not content with 
the bare belief in a future existence, but picturing 
it to themselves, as the great theatre of Divine 
Righteousness, as a state in which the final sever- 

3—2 



36 Earliest form of Egyptian belief [lect. 

ance shall be made between the good and the wicked, 
as everlasting joy to the one, and everlasting con- 
fusion to the other. And, finally, as marking a yet 
higher degree of the reflective analysis, or of the 
Divine education we find a belief, more or less clearly 
implied, that the body itself shall be redeemed from 
corruption, and raised to share with the spirit an 
endless and incorruptible life. 

Let us glance at some of the more salient forms 
which the belief in a Future Life has assumed, and 
let us take them as they have been developed in 
Egypt, in Greece, in Asia. 

What is the language of the most ancient docu- 
ments to which we can appeal? We shall find it, 
as we might anticipate, not in a formal treatise, but 
in a popular expression, and, strange to say, in an 
Egyptian romance. There is in the British Museum 
an old papyrus, brown and crumbling, covered with 
mysterious characters, traced two and thirty centu- 
ries ago by the hand of the scribe Annana. He 
was, in all probability, a contemporary of Moses, 
and the story which he has written, and which has 
recently been deciphered, bears in some particulars 
a curious resemblance to the history of Joseph, as 
recorded in Genesis. It is full of interest, both from 
its many points of contact with the rites and tradi- 
tions of other countries, and also from the singular 
light it throws on the manners and customs and 
beliefs of the ancient Egyptians. But the special 
interest, for our present purpose, lies in the way in 



n.] Papyrus in the British Museum. 37 

wliich throughout it implies a belief, not only in 
the transmigration of souls, but also in the separate 
existence of the soul from the body. Two brothers 
figure in the story. The soul of one goes into the 
topmost blossom of a cedar-tree while he is still 
alive. After a time he dies, and then his brother, 
seeking three years for the soul, finds it at last 
in the fruit which has fallen from the tree. He 
places it in a vessel of water, and it revives, and 
enters again into his brother. After this, his bro- 
ther is changed into a bullock, and then, when the 
bullock is slain, the soul passes into a tree, retaining 
in each of its transmigrations the power of speech, 
and the recollection of his former life 1 . Such is 
perhaps the earliest account, to be found in any 
heathen nation, of a belief in an existence after 
death. It is in many respects coarse and material ; 
it is confused in its expression. It stands in strange 
contrast with those yet earlier words of a Jewish 
book : " And Enoch walked with God, and he was 
not ; for God took him :" but it has its value, as an 
ancient testimony to man's instinctive assurance of 
his own immortality. Granted that this takes the 
form of metempsychosis, still, in one noticeable 
respect, it differs from later systems in which the 
same doctrine appears. The soul preserves its per- 
sonality. Whatever body it may assume, it remem- 
bers its former existence. It drinks no water of 

1 For a full account of this papyrus, see Brugsch, A us dem Orient. 
I have given a translation of it in " Good Words" for Feb. 1867. 



38 



The Rituals of the Dead. [lect. 



oblivion as in the myths of Plato, or in the fantastic 
pictures of some modern philosophers. It is how- 
ever in the "Rituals of the Dead," that we look 
for the fuller and more definite statements of the 
Egyptian creed. These documents, rolled up in a 
cylindrical form and placed not unfrequently in the 
Sarcophagi, were intended to serve as a guide-book 
for the soul, in her pilgrimages in the train of Osiris 
through the regions below; and they furnish us 
with ample evidence, that the old Egyptian believed 
in an individual immortality, and a judgment after 
death. Here, as in almost every ancient system, 
the life to come is conceived of as little else than 
a continuation of the life that is. If the soul sur- 
vives, it cannot be regarded as a pure spirit, it must 
still possess some of the properties of the material 
body 1 . Hence, "at an Egyptian funeral, common 
articles of food and dress and certain implements of 
war, of business, and of pleasure, were deposited 
with or near the corpse : the scenes of daily life 
were pictured on the mummy-cases, not so much 
in order to express the piety of survivors, as to 
gratify and stimulate the dead : a string of prayers 
and other formulae were also buried with him for 
his constant admonition, and as passports through 
the unknown world to which he had been destined ; 
and at length when he was entering 'the dark 
place * itself, the popular belief assigned him bread 

1 Animos enim per se ipsos viventes non poterant mente complecti ; 
formam aliquam figuramque quaerebant. Cic. Tusc. i. 16, § 37. 



ii.] Egyptian belief of a judgment after death. 39 

and drink, and slices of flesh off the table of the 
sun ; when he traverses the fields of the blessed, 
corn and barley are given to him, for he is pro- 
vided as he was upon earth 1 .'" But the Egyptian, 
if he thus conceived of a quasi-material soul, did 
not on that account make light of the body. If 
we do not find any mention of the resurrection of 
the body, yet the body was evidently regarded as 
partaking, in some mysterious manner, of the im- 
mortality of the soul. In no other way can we 
explain the care taken in embalming, or that lofty 
title given to the mummy, which designated it as 
' the habitation of Osiris/ or the prayers offered to 
the same god for its incorruptibility, or the sepul- 
chre built as it seemed to defy all time, which the 
Egyptian might well call his dwelling-place and 
'everlasting home.' It would detain us too long, 
to enter at any length into that very remarkable 
portion of the Egyptian creed, which relates to a 
judgment after death. But as they held that the 
personal individuality was not lost, and as they 
cherished the belief in some close and mysterious 
connection between soul and body after death, so 
also they believed in a future state of rewards and 
punishments. " Each one must submit, as he enters 
the unseen world, to the awful judgment of Osiris 
and his assessors, Truth and Justice. The heart of 
the deceased is weighed in the fatal balance, and 
if he cannot declare himself free from sin, he is 

1 Hardwick, Christ and Other Masters. Pt. iv. pp. 79—90. 



40 Its affinity with Christian doctrine. [lect. 

handed over to the ministers of vengeance, and 
after passing from one bestial shape to another, 
is at last plunged into a lake, whose waters of 
flame and waves of fire are of the most intense 
and unconquerable heat, while the thirst of the 
dead in it is unquenchable ; and they have no 
peace in it because it is filled with weeds and 
filth 1 ." The spirit, on the other hand, which has 
been pronounced free, passes into the abodes of 
the blessed, and at last attains to perfection by 
absolute union with Osiris, the Sun-god. 'This 
great god speaks to them and they speak to him ; 
his glory illuminates them in the splendour of his 
disc, while he is shining in their sphere.' It is 
scarcely necessary to remark, how much there is 
in such a theology as this, which, if it is not the 
echo of an earlier revelation, finds at least some 
points of contact with the Christian faith. That 
lake of fire and that thirst unquenchable, do we 
not find them in the words of our Master and 
the writings of His Apostles? That union with 
the true God and blessed converse with Him, is 
not this the hope which, beyond all things else, 
animates the Christian, as he seeks to pierce within 
the veil, and pictures to himself a glorious immor- 
tality ? I do not indeed pretend to put the one 
belief on a level with the other. Still less would 
I be thought to imply, that the one is in any true 
sense the anticipation of the other. But no more 

1 Birch, as quoted by Hardvvick. 



II.] 



The belief of the Greek. 



41 



striking proof could be given of the testimonium 
animce naturaliter Christians ; no clearer evidence 
that the heart and the conscience of man are wit- 
nesses to the truth. What Christ did was not, 
for the first time, to teach immortality and a 
judgment to come ; for God had written these 
things in human nature at the creation. But He 
dispelled the doubts which perplexed and tor- 
tured men in the prospect of death. By His own 
Resurrection He annulled death, and in the light 
of that Resurrection made Life and Immortality 
sure. 

From the Egyptian we turn to the Greek. And 
here again we encounter, first and in its earliest stage, 
the popular doctrine — the accepted fact of an exist- 
ence after death, and an attempt to conceive, and to 
set forth to the popular mind, the nature of that ex- 
istence, the pursuits and employments of the world 
below. But the Homeric representation is indis- 
tinct, confused, even contradictory. The dead have 
lost their true conscious personality, yet they can be 
recognized ; they still retain their earthly image and 
lineaments. They have a form, but it is an unsub- 
stantial form which eludes the grasp. "Such is the 
lot of mortals," exclaims the mother of Ulysses, 
"when they die; the muscles no longer hold together 
the flesh and bones, but they perish in the fire when 
the breath leaves the body, and the soul flits hither 
and thither like a dream." They have neither speech 
nor power of recognition, till they taste the blood of 



42 Earliest form as it appears in Homer, [lect. 

the victims, which Ulysses has poured into the 
trench 1 ; for in the blood is the life. They dwell in 
a region of thickest darkness. So profound is the 
gloom that settles even on the noblest spirits, that 
nothing can charm it away. It is in vain to soothe 
Achilles by reminding him that, as he was honoured 
like a god when alive, so now he is supreme ruler of 
the dead. He puts away the consolation, and declares 
that he would rather be the hireling of a man of no 
substance, and of cramped and narrow means, than 
be lord of all the dead. One thing only touches his 
heart with joy, and that is, to hear that his son bears 
himself bravely in the fight, and sustains the honour 
of his name. Such then is the future life, as it pre- 
sented itself to the early thought of the Greeks, and 
such is the popular mythology. The body falls to dust, 
even the spirit perishes for ever 8 ; but the soul exists, 
and its dwelling-place is beneath the earth: it lives 
a cold, sad, gloomy, dream-like life; it lives mindful 
of its former pursuits, but no longer able to enjoy 
them. Of the doctrine of a retribution, we find only 
the germ in the genuine portion of the Homeric 
poems. The crime of perjury is singled out for men- 
tion, as one which draws down upon it vengeance in 
another life. The judgment of Minos in the shades 
below, and the Tartarus and Elysium, the abode 
severally of the just and unjust, are doubtless subse- 
quent accretions, the embodiments of a later mytho- 

1 Od. xi. vv. 142—390. 

2 Nagelsbach, die Homeruche Theologie, p. 397, 398. 



n.] The sterner representations of jEschylus. 43 

logy, which, however, grew and took more definite 
shape, till they became an acknowledged element in 
the popular creed 

In the dramatic Poets of a later age, the picture 
is not very different: except in the greater promi- 
nence given to the punishment of the wicked, the 
representation is to all practical purpose the same. 
The dead, says .iEschylus, sleep "in light which is 
not light, but darkness visible" (Cho. 311): they are 
past feeling; they "have lost the wish even to rise 
again." Darius, though a king below, yet like 
Achilles, finds no joy in his kingly dignity, and bids 
the suppliants who had evoked him to reap pleasure 
while it is yet day, " for the dead are shrouded in 
thick gloom, where wealth avails not." 

In one respect however the view of .^Eschylus, as 
has been recently pointed out, is one of peculiar 
gloom and severity. For him there exists no Ely- 
sium for the blessed, no reward for goodness in the 
life beyond the grave. " ^Eschylus has not one word 
of true hope for a future state, not one image of an- 
other field of labour, where the character trained by 
sorrow here shall find exercise for its chastened 
power. It is scarcely too much to say, that for him 
the other world, and the powers by which it is go- 
verned, exist only for the guilty. There remains an 
awful and just punishment for all who sinned in life 
against God, or strangers, or parents: — 

1 Nagelsbach ut supra, p. 407. He points out how confused, and 
even contradictory, the Homeric representations are. 



44 The question as viewed by Plato. [lect. 

For Hades is a stern inquisitor 

Of men beneath the Earth, and views their deeds, 

And enters them in the tablets of his mind 

The lewd offender shall not, when he dies 
Escape arraignment in the shades below, 
Even there, another Zeus, as legends tell, 
Gives final judgment on the crimes of men. 

And so it comes to pass that the retribution is com- 
pleted there, which the Erinyes had began on earth." 
...But "the fulness of human life is on earth. The 
part of man in all his capacity for passion and action 
is played out here; and when the curtain falls, there 
remains unbroken rest, or a faint reflection of the 
past, or suffering wrought by the ministers of inexor- 
able justice. The beauty and the power of life, the 
manifold ministers of sense, are gone. They can be 
regretted, but they cannot be replaced. Sorrow is 
possible, but not joy 1 ." 

But there were those whom neither the popular 
mythology, nor the deeper theology of the poets 
could satisfy. The philosopher, questioning with 
himself concerning himself, asked for some clear 
evidence of immortality, and speculated concerning 
the nature of a life beyond the grave. In Plato the 
question recurs again and again. It arrests and 
fascinates him. Never was a nobler effort made by 
man, to attain to certainty on any question affecting 
his own nature and destiny. And nowhere is to be 
found a more signal proof, that by the unaided 
reason of man such certainty cannot be attained, that, 
1 Westcott, Theology of JEschylus, in Contemp. Rev. for Nov. 1866. 



ii ] Socrates wavers in the assertion of his hope. 45 

as Socrates himself confesses, man needs a Divine 
teacher to dispel his ignorance and to cast light upon 
life and immortality. In the Phcedo, Socrates con- 
siders himself to have proved, that the soul cannot 
die, though he admits that there may be ground 
for disputing the soundness of his reasoning. In the 
Republic, he thinks that he has established beyond the 
reach of doubt, the immortality of the soul. But in 
the Apology, true to his principles, he confesses his 
ignorance. To fear death, would be to pretend to 
a knowledge which he does not profess, for no one 
knows what death is ; for ought that appears to the 
contrary, it may be the greatest of blessings, and yet 
men fear it as if they knew it to be the greatest of 
evils. For though he does not Jcnoiu what shall be 
hereafter, yet he does know that injustice and diso- 
bedience to one who is better than ourselves, be he 
god or man, is evil and base. Death, he says, is one 
of two things. Either it is the extinction of all per- 
ception, like a dreamless sleep, and then it is a wonder- 
ful boon — for who would find many days and nights 
in his life to be preferred to a night which he has 
slept all through without a dream ? — or it is the 
migration to another place, where the rest of the 
dead are gathered, and there it will be a pleasure 
to mingle with the great men who have gone before, 
to pass under the scrutiny of the three judges who 
cannot be corrupted, like earthly judges, to converse 
with the great poets, such as Orpheus and Mu- 
sseus and Hesiod and Homer, or to cross-examine 



46 The myth in the Phcedo. [lect. 

the great heroes of the Trojan war, and to compare 
his experience with theirs. 

Although Plato's doctrine of a future life is 
troubled by the Pythagorean dream of a metem- 
psychosis, still he does not hesitate to teach in no 
doubtful language, that the future state is a state 
of rewards and punishments, in which each man re- 
ceives his sentence, according to the things he hath 
done in the body. Those rewards and punishments 
are not arbitrary, but follow by a natural law ; for 
the soul takes with it to Hades nothing but the 
results of its education and growth, which imme- 
diately begin to manifest their effects. In the mag- 
nificent myth with which the Phcedo closes, he thus 
expounds the law of retribution ; — " When the dead 
reach the place whither their genius carries them, 
they obtain their sentence, and those, whose lives 
have been neither very good nor very bad, are con- 
veyed along Acheron to the Acherusian lake, where 
they are purified of wickedness by punishment, and 
receive the reward of their good deeds. Those who 
are judged to be incurably guilty, owing to the 
greatness of their sins, are thrown into Tartarus, 
from which they never come out. Those again, 
whose sins are very great, but not past all cure, are 
thrown, for so it must be, into Tartarus ; but after a 
year they are carried by Cocytus or Pyriphlegethon 
to the Acherusian lake, where with loud cries they 
call on those whom they wronged, beseeching them 
for pardon, that so they may leave their place of 



ii.] Plato's doctrine of rewards and punishments. 47 

torment and come to them ; and if their prayer 
is heard, it is well ; if not, they return to their place 
of suffering, for they gain no respite till it is granted 
by those whom they injured. Those, lastly, who 
have lived with conspicuous holiness, are they who 
are freed from their prison-house in the lower realms, 
and rise aloft to radiant habitations, and dwell upon 
the earth which I have described. And such as 
have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy 
live wholly without bodies for the future, and rise to 
habitations more glorious than these, which it were 
hard to paint... But I think what I have said shows 
that we must strive by all means to gain virtue and 
wisdom in our lives. The prize is glorious and the 
hope is great." The myth in the Gorgias is not less 
striking and not less explicit. In both the same 
truths are enforced. As Plato has insisted in the 
Republic, that the brief space between childhood 
and old age is too short for the reward of virtue, so 
now he shows us, how both virtue and vice receive 
their just recompense in the life to come. He sees 
that punishment may be exemplary as well as reme- 
dial. He does not shrink even from the awful 
sentence of everlasting woe, pronounced upon despe- 
rate and incurable wickedness. He sees the holy 
and the just crowned with everlasting felicity. In 
the use which he makes of these myths, Plato shows 
his power as a religious teacher. The popular alle- 
gories for him contain the profoundest of moral truths. 
They are the poetry of the conscience and of the heart. 



48 His arguments fail to convince us. [lect. 

Surely there is no " half smile playing upon the lips 
of the divine old man which betrays his scepticism 
without showing his contempt 1 ." The philosopher 
and the moral teacher finds his lessons confirmed by 
the beautiful fictions of the popular creed, which he 
embellishes and exalts, and reads in them a living 
confirmation of his teaching, that "we must strive 
by all means to gain virtue and wisdom in our lives." 
It was a noble attempt to marry the wisdom of the 
sage and the religion of the vulgar, to show that 
reason did not contradict faith, but that the truth, 
which was reached through the conclusions of the 
intellect, had already its support in the conscience 
and in the instinctive belief of mankind. So far as 
philosophy can accomplish the task, it may be said 
that Plato has established by solid reasoning the 
immateriality of the soul, the absolute distinction 
between mind and matter. The triumph was great ; 
and yet Cicero with all his admiration for Plato, 
confesses how slight an impression such reasoning 
produced. Plato, he tells us, seems to have con- 
vinced himself, and to have made others wish, that he 
was right 2 . "Whilst I am reading his treatise," he 
says, " I assent to his reasoning ; when I lay down 
the book and think over the question of immortality 
myself, my assent slips away from me 3 ." But in 
truth, as we have seen, Socrates himself shrinks 
from a positive affirmation of his belief. And it 

1 Cousin, CEuvres de Platon, i. p. 179. 

2 Cic. Tusc. I. 21, § 49. 3 lb. I. 11, § 25. 



ii.] A sublime probability. 49 



is evident, as has been remarked by some of Plato's 
most accomplished critics, that no reasoning can do 
more than make the life to come probable. " Philo- 
sophy demonstrates," says one of them, " that there 
is in man a principle that cannot perish. But that 
this principle reappears in another world with the 
same order of faculties and the same laws which it has 
here, that it carries with it there the consequences 
of the good and evil actions which it has committed 
...this is a sublime probability, which does not admit 
perhaps of rigorous demonstration, but which is 
authorized and consecrated by the secret trust of the 
heart and the universal consent of the world 1 ." 

Yes a sublime probability, and " probability is the 
very guide of life." And yet something more is neces- 
sary, if religion is to lend her sanction to morality. If 
the future life is to sway and rule the present life, 
if a man is to sacrifice the pleasures of time to the 
joys of eternity, if he is to resist the fascinations 
of sense and the strong grasp of covetousness, if 
he is to master the swelling of passion, and turn 
a deaf ear to the voice which bids him take his ease, 
eat, drink and be merry, then he needs something 
more than a wavering hope to be the anchor of 
his soul. Then he needs a voice that he can recog- 
nize as that of God, to confirm his doubts and fears. 
Then he needs the word and the promise and the 
example of One, who rising Himself in human flesh 
from the grave, has brought Life and Immortality 
to light. 

1 Cousin, (Euvres de Platon, I. p. 178. 
P. H. L. 4 



50 . Eastern beliefs. [lect. 

If our examination of ancient systems of belief 
and of speculation were to stop here, we might con- 
clude with Cicero that the belief in the Immortality 
of the soul is like the belief in God, universal. But 
we must not omit all notice of forms of religion which 
count their disciples by millions. The East as well 
as the West claims our consideration. Whilst Greece 
was advancing on the path of civilization, another 
civilization was developing itself between the Indus 
and the Ganges. Two vast rival systems of religious 
belief have there sprung up, and struggled for the 
mastery, the system of the Brahmin, and the system 
of the Buddhist. Full of interest, at any time, to 
the student of man's nature and history, these sys- 
tems derive a fresh interest, from the singular coin- 
cidence which they often present with the course of 
modern speculation. In fact it is not too much to 
say, that " the history of mind in India, corresponds 
to the same history in Europe:" and that " Every 
system that has appeared in the West, has had its 
counterpart in the East \" 

As in Egypt, and in Greece, so in India we can 
trace distinctly the development of doctrine. In 
the most ancient religious poems of the Aryans, in 
the earliest Vedic hymns, the future life is scarcely 
mentioned ; the fears and hopes of the present life 
occupy the foremost place, in the midst, of a pan- 
theistic worship of the forces of nature, not want- 
ing either in grandeur or in poetry, but in which 

1 Hunt, Pantheism, p. 18. 



H.] The system of the Brahmin. 51 



the notion of a wise and righteous Providence can 
scarcely be discerned. Even there, however, we 
meet with the doctrine of transmigrations, though in 
a form less extravagantly grotesque than that which 
it subsequently assumed. And there too is the germ 
of future recompense, though the palm is given not 
to moral virtue, but to the zealous practice of cere- 
monial observances. 

In the more matured system of the Brahmins, 
the world is an ever-fluctuating development of the 
great soul of Being; it issues from, and is a part of 
Brahma Himself, as the stream issues from its 
source, as the tree from the seed, as the spider's web 
from the spider. The universe is the theatre of 
a perpetual movement, in consequence of which souls 
find themselves, now nearer, now further removed 
from their native source. They pass from body 
to body, they visit in succession the bodies of 
stones, plants, animals, gods, men, without truce, and 
without repose, doomed according to their merits 
or demerits, to ascend or descend the eternal ladder, 
plunged now it may be in all the horrors, exquisite 
and prolonged, of the eight and twenty hells, or 
raised to the rank of higher beings, in an existence 
above that of this world, till at length the vast sum 
of revolutions being completed, they are absorbed 
in the great principle of the Universe, the immovable 
Brahma, in whose immovable void, existence is the 
only perfection, and the only bliss 1 . 

1 Tame, Nouveaux Essais de Critique et d'Histoire, pp. 327, 328. 

4—2 



52 The system of the Buddhist. [lect. 

When in the Vedanta, the question is asked, 
" What is the nature of that absorbed state which 
the souls of good men enjoy after death?" the 
answer is : " It is a participation of the Divine 
nature, where all passions are utterly unknown and 
where consciousness is absorbed in bliss." 

Everlasting metempsychosis, everlasting evolu- 
tion, with everlasting re-absorption, this is the future 
life in which sixty millions of the human race at 
this day believe. 

Buddhism was a reformation of Brahmanism. 
With the exception of Christianity, no religious 
system that the world has seen, has ever produced so 
mighty a revolution, has ever inculcated a morality 
so pure, or breathed so Divine a charity, or spoken 
words of such tender compassion to the Pariah and 
the outcast. Its founder Sakya Muni lived some five 
centuries before the Christian era 1 . The son of a 
king, and accustomed to all the pleasures and luxury 
of an oriental court, he at an early age became pro- 
foundly convinced of the vanity of the world. The 
spectacle of the miseries of life, of sickness, old age 
and death, touched his heart, and he set himself with 
noble purpose to deliver men from the curse which 
weighed upon them. With this object in view, he 
made no distinction of caste or race or sex. He 
broke down the barriers of prejudice and of custom. 
He called all to salvation, the king and the slave, 
the Brahmin and the Tschandala, the pure and the 

1 See Barthelemy St Hilaire, LeBouddha et le Bouddhisme. 



II.] Does it teacJi annihilation ? 53 

impure, his own countrymen and strangers, men and 
women. The good news which he preached, was 
deliverance from the burden of existence. Our 
sufferings, he said, spring from our passions, and are 
the punishments for sins committed in a former 
state of existence. Our aim, then, must be to crush 
our passions, to crush every desire which binds us 
to life. When this is accomplished we shall find 
rest, we shall find it in non-existence, in freedom from 
that existence which is itself a penalty for sin. It 
has been much disputed whether the Nirvana, the 
final rest which he promised to the perfected dis- 
ciple, is or is not equivalent to annihilation. It 
would ill become one, who has not made a study of 
the original texts, to pretend to pronounce a decision 
on this question. Great authorities are arrayed on 
either side. But even if Sakya Muni himself pro- 
claimed annihilation as the crown and reward of 
perfection, it may be certainly affirmed that this 
teaching has since been greatly modified 1 . Nirvana 
is to the Buddhist rather the negation and opposite 
of the present existence, than annihilation in the 
sense in which we commonly understand it. It is 
that state " which is followed by no birth, and after 
which there is no renewing of the miseries of exis- 
tence. It is beyond the world of sensation and of 
change. Here there is coming and going, change 

1 It may fairly be questioned whether Buddha himself taught nihilism, 
but if he did, his teaching was certainly not generally received. See 
Max Muller, Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. i. p. 233. 



54 Hie tivo systems compared. [lect. 

and motion, fulness and manifoldness, combination 
and individuality. In Nirvana is rest and stillness, 
simplicity and unity for ever. Here are birth, sick- 
ness, age and death, virtue and vice, merit and de- 
merit, there, there is Eternal repose, complete de- 
liverance from existence and all the conditions of 
existence. The soul can no longer be born, and 
therefore no longer die. The l T is extinguished as 
plants no longer watered, as trees whose roots have 
been dug up from the earth, or as the light goes out 
when the oil fails in the lamp 1 ." 

Such, roughly sketched, are the systems of the 
Brahman and the Buddhist, such is their consolation 
in death, such their hope of a life to come. Widely 
differing in many respects, the two systems are alike 
in this, that they both tend to the destruction of the 
individual personality. The one destroys the indi- 
vidual by plunging him in the Absolute Being. The 
other destroys him, if not by actual annihilation, by 
robbing him of all character, of all thought, and feel- 
ing, and will, and action. Both look for something 
after death ; both deny the only immortality which is' 
worth contending for, the immortality of the con- 
scious individual life. 

"We have directed our glance in turn to Greece 
and to India, to the West and to the East. A 
day came in the history of the world, when in 
consequence of the great political events which 
modified ancient society, the East and the West 
1 Hunt, Pantheism, pp. 24, 25. See also Taine ut supra, p. 340. 



ii.] Fusion of Eastern and Western thought. 55 

met on the shores of the Mediterranean. Then 
took place that wonderful fusion of the thoughts 
and hopes of the world, all the fruits of which we 
have not even yet gathered ; and not only did the 
East and the West meet, but at the same epoch 
religion and philosophy stretched each to the other 
her hand. It was a solemn moment. What was 
the result ? 

Let us transport ourselves into Greece in the 
fifth century of our era 1 . Athens, glorious Athens, 
the illustrious mother of thought, and of the 
arts, was near to her fall ; that c bright particular 
star' in the heaven of mind was about to set for 
ever. But at the moment when the star was touch- 
ing the horizon, it shot forth one last gleam of 
surpassing splendour. A numerous youth, gathered 
from all parts of the Roman Empire, crowded the 
amphitheatres of the city, which was still the capital 
of the intellectual world. In those large assemblies 
were heard the words of a man, whom some vene- 
rated as a god. He styled himself the Universal 
Pontiff. He was the most esteemed of philosophers, 
and the most erudite of priests ; he seemed to sum up 
in his person the whole moral and intellectual growth 
of past centuries, all philosophy and all religion. 
The name of this man was Proclus. He was the 
last in a long series of sages, and his doctrine con- 

1 E. Naville, La Vie Eternelle, to whom I am greatly indebted in 
what follows, though he hardly does justice to Proclus or to the Alexan- 
drian School. 



56 



Attempted revival of the [lect. 



tained the result of four centuries of intellectual toil. 
This doctrine was that of the famous school of 
Alexandria. To form that school East and West 
had united. Into it, as into some vast reservoir, two 
mighty streams had poured their treasures of thought 
and learning. It was the teaching of this school 
that Mythology was the bark and rind of truth, and 
that Pantheism was the inner heart of truth. For 
the living God, the First cause of the Universe, the 
Alexandrians substituted an abstract and barren con- 
ception, a God without intelligence, without liberty, 
without power. Far from making any successful 
attempt to assure to us immortality after death, the 
whole practical result of their doctrine was to do away 
with such a belief. The Greek myths, those graceful 
fables, which gave life and movement to all around, 
were no more than the airy and transparent clothing 
of the gloomy thoughts and conceptions of Asia. The 
dogmas of the Brahmins were erected under a 
different form in the country of Homer and of Plato. 
Such was the result of the meeting between the 
thought of the East and the thought of the West. 

It was a crisis in the intellectual progress of the 
world. Ancient wisdom seemed to be gathering all 
its forces, as if again to assert its pre-eminence. 
Never was it animated by a deeper enthusiasm of ac- 
tivity, never had it armed itself for a more resolute, a 
more desperate struggle. The representatives of the 
ancient world strove in vain to marry the brilliant 
fictions of fable to the profound conceptions of genius. 



»•] 



Alexandrian philosophy. 



57 



Another and a mightier power was sweeping past 
them, and advancing to conquests for which they 
could not dare to hope. And why? — because in a 
distant province, four centuries before, One who 
had studied neither the wisdom of the East nor 
the philosophy of the West, One whose garb and 
speech were those of a Galilean peasant, had preached 
eternal life and the resurrection from the dead 
to a few boatmen on the Lake of Gennesareth; 
because a man, named Paul of Tarsus, forgetting 
his Greek and Jewish lore, had been content to 
know nothing else but Jesus crucified and risen 
from the dead ; because at the preaching of this word, 
there had been kindled in hearts far and wide, east 
and west, north and south, a hope so full of immor- 
tality, that men went to meet martyrdom, as they 
would have gone to a festival, not because they were 
weary of this world, but that they might attain to the 
palm of an endless life. Nothing could arrest the de- 
velopment of the new doctrine. The seed had be- 
come a sapling, the sapling had shot up and spread 
itself into a mighty and umbrageous tree. Just as 
the pine of the forest stretching its branches to the 
sun covers with its shadow the lesser undergrowth, 
killing the vegetation whose nourishment it absorbs, 
so Christianity, as it grew, robbed of air and light the 
gods of Olympus, and covered the earth with the 
fragments of ancient theories, all whose life it had 
drained, all whose meaning it had gathered into 
its own bosom. Have we ever tried to picture to 



58 Overthrow of ancient beliefs. [lect. 

ourselves the struggle of which the world was at that 
time the theatre? Have we ever tried to conceive 
what must have been the feelings of the citizens of 
Rome, when that proud city was asked to renounce 
all that pomp, in which the ceremonies of religion 
lent splendour and dignity to the service of the State, 
that Capitol in which were gathered the spoils of the 
Universe, those triumphs in which the princes of the 
world did homage to the majesty of the sovereign 
people? Can we understand what must have been 
the feelings of those young men, who were bidden to 
give up their pleasures, their festivals which were 
the charm of their life, the brilliant poetry which 
fascinated their imagination, and all this for a word 
rugged and uncouth as it was new, for a message of 
which it might justly be doubted, whether it were in 
a greater degree foolishness to the wise, or a stum- 
blingblock to men of the world. And yet that 
word had conquered. The ancient religions, long 
assailed alike by the force oi reason and by the 
protests of conscience, at length fell, as Dagon fell 
before the Ark, on the day when outside the walls 
of Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth was nailed to the 
cross, in the midst of women who bewailed Him and 
a people who derided Him. Thus did the* Wisdom 
of the old world pale before the Word which shed 
light upon life and immortality. 

Yes, the foolishness of God is wiser than the wis- 
dom of men. It was so then, it is so now. System 
after system has sprung up and perished. Even 



ii.] St PauTs sure and certain hope. 59 

in the last few years, in the full light of Christianity, 
we have seen men building up, with a force of 
genius worthy of a better cause, theories of metem- 
psychosis and transmigration, pretending to explain 
the world and man without any recognition of God 
and of Providence, denying to the human race the 
hope of immortality, substituting the immortality 
of the race, or of works, of matter and of force, for 
the immortality of the soul, and a personal existence 
after death. We listen with fainting heart to these 
prophets of destruction. "We listen perchance more 
hopefully to the advocates of a better wisdom, who 
yet bid us shut our Bibles, because Reason suffices of 
herself to place on sure grounds our eternal hope, to 
construct for us the charter of our immortality. And 
as we turn away, with our doubts and fears still thick 
about us, our misgivings and perplexities unallayed, 
our eye falls on the page, written from his prison in 
Rome, by one of whom the world was not worthy. He 
was no dreamer, he was no fanatic. He was a man 
of cultivated intellect, of large heart, of profound con- 
victions. He writes to a friend in the near prospect 
of death, but no shadow of gloom darkens his spirit ; 
there is no faltering, no fear, but the light of eternity 
is in his eye, and the great peace of God is in his 
heart, and it is thus he writes : " I am now ready to 
be offered up, and the time of my departure is at 
hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished 
my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there 
is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which 



,430 The secret of that hope. [lect. is. 

the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that 
day." And if you ask, Whence this high confidence, 
this unshaken hope, this holy joy? the answer is to 
be found in other words in the same letter : " I 
know whom I have believed ; I am the herald and 
the apostle of Him who has abolished death, and 
brought Life and Immortality to light." 



LECTUEE III. 



THE HOPE OF THE JEW. 



Luke XX. 37, 38. 

Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, 
when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the 
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a 
God of the dead, but of the living : for all live unto him. 

We have already reviewed some of the principal 
systems of Gentile belief, and Gentile speculation, 
concerning the life to come. Apart from any other 
value which they may have, they are witnesses for 
God, they are signs of man's moral nature, evidences 
of an inner revelation of the heart and conscience, 
which proclaims a future life and a future judg- 
ment. When we turn from these beliefs and specu- 
lations, to those records of Jewish faith which we 
have in the Old Testament, we might certainly and 
reasonably expect that, if here we have a more dis- 
tinct, personal revelation of God, here also a clearer 
light would rest on the problem we are considering. 
For the knowledge of God and the knowledge of 
man are . inseparably associated. Whatever throws 



62 



The Hope of the Jew. 



[lect. 



light on the one must throw light on the other 
also. In proportion as the belief in God's nature 
and attributes is pure and elevated, in the same 
proportion will man form a right conception of his 
relation to God, and therefore of his future des- 
tiny. And this expectation would be strengthened, 
by observing that there is a vital continuity be- 
tween Judaism and Christianity 1 , that the New 
Law is in some of its most essential features but 
a development and spiritual interpretation of the 
Old. The God of Moses is the God of Christians; 
the general principles of morality — notwithstand- 
ing some obvious and admitted exceptions — are 
the same in the Pentateuch and the Gospel. In 
both, there is the same close and intimate con- 
nection between morality and religion ; in both, the 
same precept to love our neighbour, flowing out of 
the one great primary command to love God ; in 
both, the same trust in the infinite wisdom and 
justice and goodness of God, the same submission 
to His providence, the same belief in the efficacy 
of prayer. It would have seemed but natural 
therefore, that a judgment to come which forms 
so powerful a sanction in the Christian scheme, 
should have had its due place in the sanctions of 
the Law of Moses. 

And yet it is remarkable that, whilst not only 
the unity of God, but the holiness, the truth, 

1 This has been strikingly illustrated in Lord Hatherley's recently 
published Volume, " The Continuity of Scripture." 



III.] 



The Hope of the Jew. 



63 



the loving mercy of God are presented in the Old 
Testament, in a manner not very unlike that in 
which they are presented in the New, and in the 
most marked contrast with the gross and revolting 
conceptions to be found in the religious systems 
of the heathen, and the feeble and imperfect con- 
ceptions of the most enlightened of pagan philo- 
sophers, — it is remarkable, I say, that so little 
should be revealed concerning the final destiny of 
man. The Future Life, as a doctrine, occupies no 
prominent place in the religion of Moses and the 
Prophets. The immortality of the soul is neither 
argued nor affirmed. The resurrection of the body 
is kept in the background, and not fully disclosed 
till towards the end of the Old Testament dispen- 
sation. Darkness rests upon the grave and upon 
all beyond it ; and the rewards and punishments 
of the Future Life are either unknown, or appa- 
rently exercise no practical influence on men's con- 
duct here. At first sight and on a cursory exami- 
nation, there seems to be no advance whatever 
upon the pagan systems, so far as this article of 
faith is concerned. 

In the Pentateuch the silence is profound. Only 
a hint is dropt here and there, suggestive of a 
belief, which is never explicitly stated. The im- 
mediate derivation of man's life from God 1 , the 
translation of Enoch, who was taken early from 



1 Gen. ii. 7. 



64 Absence of any clear knowledge [lect. 

the world because he pleased God 1 , the prayer of 
the dying Jacob 2 , the wish expressed by Balaam, — 
who however was a Gentile, not a Jew, — that he 
might die the death of the righteous 3 , these are 
all, or nearly all, the intimations, certainly neither 
very many nor very clear, of hopes reaching beyond 
this world, to be found in the Books of Moses. 
In later Books, the recognition of another life 
grows somewhat more distinct. There we find for 
instance, the belief that they who are separated by 
death shall meet again in another life, and this 
thought was David's consolation, when the child 
he loved was taken from him 4 . We find even a 
belief, that it was possible for the dead to revisit 
the earth, and hold converse with those that they 
had known here, as in the appearance of Samuel 
to Saul 5 . And so far there would seem to be evi- 
dence, that the Jew, whatever other conceptions 
he might form of the unseen world, felt assured 
at least, that the soul did not perish with the 
body, that there was a true continuation of per- 
sonal existence after death. But nevertheless, in 
the near prospect of death, the other world is even 
to faithful spirits full of gloom and terror. The 
representations of Sheol, in the religious poetry of 
the nation, are not very different from the repre- 
sentations of Hades among the earlier Greeks. 
The same obscurity hangs over the dwelling of 

1 Gen. v. 24, comp. Ecclus. xliv. 16. 2 Gen. xlix. 18. 

3 Num. xxiii. 10. 4 2 Sam. xii. 23. 5 1 Sam. xxviii. 



III.] 



of the Future Life. 



65 



the dead ; there is the same recoil from its dreary 
darkness. Read such complaints as these : 

"What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the 
pit? 

Shall the dnst give thanks to Thee ? 
Shall it declare Thy truth 1 \ n 

" In death there is no remembrance of thee, 

In the unseen world who shall give Thee thanks 2 ?" 

"My life draweth nigh unto the unseen world, 
I am counted with them that go down into the pit 

Like the slain lying in the grave,... 
Whom Thou rememberest no more, 

But they are cut off from Thy hand 3 ." 

" Wilt Thou show wonders unto the dead 1 
Shall the shades below arise and give Thee thanks? 
Shall Thy loving-kindness be told in the grave 

Thy faithfulness in destruction ? 
Shall Thy wonders be known in the dark? 

And Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness 4 ? " 

Or read again the elegy of Hezekiah, written on 
his recovery from sickness : 

"I said in the cutting off of my days, 
I shall go to the gates of the unseen world... 
I said, I shall not see Jah, 
(Even) Jah in the land of the living : 
I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the 
world. 

****** 

The unseen world cannot give Thee thanks, 
Death cannot celebrate Thee : 

They that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy truth. 



1 Ps. xxx. 9. 
3 Ps. lxxxviii. 3 — 5. 
P. H. L. 



2 Ps. vi. 5. 
4 lb. 10—12. 



5 



66 



The recoil from Death. [lect. 



The living, the living, he shall give Thee thanks, 

As I do this day; 
(The) father to (the) children shall make known concerning 
Thy truth 1 ." 

I do not insist here upon the language of the 
Preacher asking in utter perplexity if there be any 
difference between the death of man and the death 
of the brute 2 . For his words are manifestly the 
utterance, not of his higher, but of his lower self. 
A worldly life, devotion to material objects, the pur- 
suit of selfish ends, had engendered that cynical scep- 
ticism which, losing its hold on God, loses also its 
hold on immortality. And before the writer closes 
that journal of his inner life, you see that faith has 
vanquished doubt, and that in the light of that 
triumph he can look beyond death and the grave. 
But take only such passages as these I have read, 
and what is the impression left upon the mind ? Is 
not the picture dark as that in Homer ? The dead 
are without sensation and without hope, forgotten of 
God, and unable to praise Him. It may be said, 
indeed, that in such passages, sickness and pain 
and distress of mind have wrought their natural 
effect, and that the dark colours of the picture are 
the unhealthy projection of a disturbed and melan- 
choly mood. Yet one feature at least is the same 
in another song, where the feeling expressed is 
anything but that of dejection or despondency. It 



1 Is. xxxviii. 10, 11, 18, 19. 



2 Eccl. iii. 21. 



in.] The Jew and the Gveek. 67 

is in a liturgical Psalm, it is in a Psalm sung by 
the whole congregation gathered before God in Zion, 
it is in the midst of a loud strain of triumph and 
thankfulness and exultation, that we meet with such 
lines as these : 

" The dead cannot praise Jah, 
Neither all they that go down into silence 1 ." 

It cannot be denied, then, that so far as any dis- 
tinct knowledge of a Future Life went, the Jew had 
no advantage over the Gentile. Like the Gentile he 
thought that in some form, he knew not what, 
his existence would be prolonged after death. To 
him, as to the Gentile, Sheol was a gloomy, sunless 
abode, and life in this world more blessed than life 
in the next even for the righteous. But there is 
one marked and characteristic difference between 
the thought of the Jew, and the thought of the 
Greek, as they look upon death. Both cling to 
life, both recoil from the awful shadow that sits at 
the portal of the grave. But the Jew clings to life, 
not for the sake of its pleasures or its gifts, but 
because here he can know and love and praise God ; 
he hates death, because there he is cut off from God, 
forgotten of His hand. The Greek clings to life, 
because it is life, because the sun is bright, and 
there is much animal and sensible enjoyment ; he 
hates death, because with death all his earthly 
pleasures are extinguished. The thought of God 



1 Ps. cxv. 17. 



5—2 



68 



Silence of the Old Testament 



[lect. 



is far from him, the thought of this world only is 
in his heart. 

With conceptions thus imperfect respecting ex- 
istence in the unseen world, we cannot be surprised 
that the doctrine of a future retribution is, at least 
during the earlier periods, but vaguely hinted at in 
the Old Testament. Moreover, the promises of tem- 
poral prosperity for the good, and the threat of 
punishment, swift and visible in this world for the 
wicked, tended no doubt to fix men's gaze on the 
present scene, and to darken, if not absolutely to 
hide from them, the future recompense. Hence the 
judgment upon the wicked is not misery in hell, 
but speedy extinction here. When the Psalmist ex- 
claims in triumph, " The wicked shall be turned into 
hell 1 /' — it is the unseen world, Sheol, not the place 
of torment, Gehenna, of which he speaks, and what 
he anticipates is, not that the wicked will be pun- 
ished hereafter, but that they will speedily come to 
an end here, and be cast into the abode of darkness 
and forgetfulness. Even in a Psalm like the 49th, 
where the contrast is so striking between the rich 
in this world, who in their folly live like the brutes, 
and think to build for themselves an immortality 

1 Ps.ix. 17. Yet, owing to the ambiguity of our English word "hell," 
which, though now denoting commonly the place of torment, originally 
meant nothing more than the separate state of spirits, the hidden place, 
without reference to bliss or w^oe, this text is usually quoted in our 
pulpits, as teaching the future punishment of the wicked. I may be 
allowed to refer to my Commentary for an exposition of this, and the 
other passages, quoted in this Lecture from the Psalms. 



in.] with respect to future punishment. 69 

here, and the servant of God, sustaining his faith 
in the hope of everlasting union with God, there 
is nothing said of future punishment. 

"Like slieep they are gathered to the unseen world, 
Death is their shepherd : 
And the upright have dominion over them in the morning; 
And their beauty shall the unseen world consume, 
That it have no more dwelling-place." 

Whatever sense be attached to the morning — 
whether the morning of deliverance for those who 
have been sighing as it were in a night of misery 
and suffering, crushed and trodden down by thei? 
oppressors, or the morning of the resurrection 
the triumph of the righteous shall be com 
the tables shall be turned, and they and i, 
wicked shall have dominion, still defeat and dark, - ,s, 
not groans and despair, are the portion of the unjust. 
It is the same in the 73rd Psalm. The problem 
of life which there weighed so heavily upon the 
Psalmist's heart was this, that the constant prosperity 
of the wicked, the constant suffering of the righteous, 
seemed to impugn the very righteousness of God. 
The facts of the world were a glaring contradiction 
to His government. It was this which perplexed 
the Psalmist's spirit , as he strove to reconcile those 
facts with his conscience, and his conscience with his 
faith. And when at last, tried and shaken, and well 
nigh swept from his foothold by the waves of doubt, 
he finds a shelter in the sanctuary of God from the 
wreck which threatened him, still the light which is 



70 Silence of the Old Testament [lect. 

cast on the justice of God falls rather on retribution 
in this life, than on retribution in the life to come. 

* ' Oh how suddenly are they destroyed as in a moment ; 
They come to an end, they are cut off because of terrors; 
As one despiseth a dream when he awaketh, 
(So) Thou 0 Lord, when Thou arousest Thyself, despisest their 
image." 

The wicked perish in the very bosom of their 
prosperity, their end is as sudden as it is fearful, 
their hard, selfish, unloving life is gone, like a 
hideous dream, which in our waking moments we 
forget. No trace is left of that image, which once 
seemed so fair and so proud. God has poured His 
contempt upon it, and it has vanished from the earth. 

Even in the magnificent song of triumph which 
the prophet Isaiah raises over the King of Babylon, 
where he pictures in language, the poetic force and 
vividness of which have never been surpassed, the 
descent of the overthrown monarch into Hades, the 
judgment which falls upon him belongs more to 
this life than to the next : 

" Hell [Sheol, the unseen world] is moved from beneath for thee, 
To meet thee at thy coming. 
It stirreth up for thee the shades below, 
All the mighty of the earth : 
It niaketh to arise from their thrones 
All the kings of the nations. 
All of them answer and say unto thee : 
Thou also art become weak as we ! 
Thou art made like unto us ! 
Thy pomp is brought down to Sheol, 
The music of thy harps. 



in.] with respect to future punishment. 71 

Under tliee the worm is spread, 

And worms cover tliee. 

How hast thou fallen from heaven, 

O Lucifer, son of the morning ! 

How art thou cast down to the earth, 

Thou that didst lord it over the nations 1 ." 

I do not forget that this is the language of 
poetry, and the language of poetry, it will be 
said, is not to be pressed. But so far as we 
catch here any glimpse into the unseen state, it is 
a state very different from that which our Christian 
belief is wont to portray, it is a state in which 
even the externals of the present life are in some 
measure at least prolonged. The kings of the earth 
are still kings below, each one sitting on his throne. 
They have the memory of their former greatness, 
they triumph in the fall of a proud and oppressive 
rival, who comes to take his place among them, but 
who in that abode of darkness can exercise no 
sovereignty, and who shorn of his power can inspire 
no terror. 

I am not aware that there is a single passage 
in the Old Testament, which represents the unseen 
world as a place of punishment for the ungodly. 
The final judgment is indeed announced in clear 
terms by the prophet Daniel, but he is speaking of 
retribution, not as following immediately on the 
separation, of the soul from the body, but as follow- 
ing on the sentence pronounced after the resurrec- 

1 Is. xiv. 9—12. 



72 Partly accounts for the [leot. 



tion. And let me say in passing, does not this fact, 
that so impenetrable a cloud of darkness rests on 
the future condition of the wicked, account, partly 
at least, for much of that language which has so 
often shocked sensitive minds, in which Jewish 
bards and prophets cry out for vengeance, on proud 
tyrants or faithless friends : 

" Let death come hastily upon them, 
Let them go down alive into Sheol 1 ." 

" Let his days be few, 
And let another take his office 2 ." 

" The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth their vengeance, 
He shall wash his footsteps in the blood of the wicked 8 "? 

May it not be pleaded in justification of those, 
who, hating wickedness with all their hearts, saw 
it great and prosperous in this world, and knew not 
its terrible chastisement in the world to come, that 
they longed to see God's righteous judgment exe- 
cuted here, and hoped themselves to be the instru- 
ments of His justice? Is it not exactly what we 
might expect ? If to the saints of old, as to us, had 
been preached "a worm that dieth not and a fire 
that is not quenched," would not some accents of 
sorrow, or of intercession, have mingled with their 
indignation ? Would no balm of pity have been 
shed upon their verse, no prayer for forgiveness 
have softened, or turned away those imprecations, 
which now are poured in a hot lava-stream upon 



1 Ps. lv. 15. 2 Ps. cix. 8. 3 Ps. lviii. 10. 



in.] Imprecations of the Old Testament. 73 

the head of the wicked ? Surely had the eyes of 
the Hebrew Poet been opened to see the terrors 
of the world to come, his prayer would have been 
not, 'Blot them out of Thy book/ but rather with 
Him who hung upon the cross, 1 Father forgive them, 
for they know not what they do 1 .' 

But although the next world is itself shrouded 
in darkness, and although there is no positive reve- 
lation concerning future happiness for the good, and 
future misery for the wicked, yet Faith ever and 
anon asserts her prerogative, as the evidence of 
things not seen, the confident assurance of things 
hoped for. The hope of the righteous is not alto- 
gether hidden from their eyes, like the doom of the 
wicked a . 

When the saint of God, in the midst of the 
discouragements and sorrows of this life, looks for 
refuge to God, he wins for himself bright, though 
passing, glimpses of a happiness in store for him 
beyond the grave. A risen Saviour has not yet 
indeed taken the sting from death, or robbed the 
grave of its victory, but the faith which clings to 
God can rest assured, that God will not forsake it, 
but will make the soul that trusts in Him, partaker 
of His own immortality. It was in this faith, that 
David resisted the temptation which beset him, to 

1 I have entered more fully on this subject in the Introduction to 
my Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. i. p. lxxiii. and in a note on Ps. 
xxxv. 22. 

2 See note on Ps, lxxiii. 18. 



74 The Hope of the Jew rests [lect. 

forego his heavenly hope for an earthly. The na- 
tions of the world, by whom he was surrounded, were 
distinguished in art and science, and conspicuous 
in all that could give lustre and strength to empire. 
Wealth and commerce, luxury and power, contri- 
buted to recommend and illustrate the seductive 
idolatries of the vast and aggressive kingdoms, by 
which the Syrian shepherds were hemmed in. The 
god of this world was ready with his whisper, ' All 
these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down 
and worship me.' And how was it that the fasci- 
nation was broken ? How was it that the Poet- 
king could say with righteous scorn, 

" Their drink-offerings of blood will I not offer, 
Neither take their names upon my lips 1 "? 

It was because he had tasted a purer joy, a holier 
pleasure. It was because he could say to the 
eternal God, 

" Thou art my Lord : 
I have no good beyond Thee." 

It was because he could claim for himself a blessing 
like that of Levi, 

"Jehovah Himself is my portion," 

and triumphantly exclaim, 

" I have set Jehovah always before me ; 
Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved." 

Could he dream for a moment, that death should 



1 Ps. xvi. 4. 



in.] not on reasoning, but on Faith. 75 

sever between him and his God ? In that hour 
of resolve, and joyful self consecration, and ardent 
cleaving of the soul to God, could it doubt its own 
immortality ? The life of God which was its life, 
was its own sufficient and triumphant witness. That 
life could never perish. The breath of God was 
not breathed into man in vain. It must impart 
even to the frail tabernacle, which it had helped, 
to fashion, something of its own eternity. Hope 
resting on God made all the future its own : 

"Thou wilt make me know the path of Life, 
Fulness of Joy in Thy Presence, 
Pleasures at Thy right hand for evermore." 

No philosophic reasoning comes to the aid of the 
Hebrew, as he questions with himself concerning 
a life hereafter. He can construct no argument for 
the immateriality of the soul, he can build up no 
plausible hypothesis, and find no legends of his race 
which shall stay his trembling heart in the hour of his 
dissolution. He does not reason, ' I think ; therefore 
I am;' 'I shall continue to think; therefore I shall 
continue to be.' He does not argue with himself, 
The soul is one and indivisible; therefore it cannot 
perish. He does not draw his hopes from the consti- 
tution of man, from his memory, his affections, his 
intellect, his sense of law and duty. Even in face 
of the terrible problems of life, and in sight of all 
the prosperous wrong-doing, which was so great a 
trial to his constancy, he does not escape from his 
perplexity by any chain of reasoning, by any ana- 



76 The doctrine of Immortality [lect. 

lories that Nature might suggest and philosophy 
confirm. He does not infer, that, because the world 
is out of joint, God's righteousness must have a 
larger sphere of action, than this world and the 
short years of man, and so conclude that there is a 
life to come, in which the vindication of God's moral 
government shall be complete. His is a grander 
logic, for it is the logic of the heart. His conclu- 
sions are reached, not in the schools, but in the 
sanctuary of God. There, drawing near to God, 
who is his Life, in penitence, in humility, in adora- 
tion, in faith, he can but wonder that he should have 
so " pierced himself" with the goads of doubt, that 
he should have been like the beasts in his ignorance 
and folly 1 . There, casting himself into the Ever- 
lasting arms, he knows that these shall be beneath 
him, though heart and flesh should fail. There, 
holding sweet converse with his Eternal Friend, 
he is sure, that the God who has stooped to speak 
to him, as a friend, will not suffer him to drop into 
the abyss of annihilation. His life is no passing phe- 
nomenon. He is not like the tree, or the flower, or 
the bird, or the beast, creatures of God's hand who 
know Him not, and do but yield Him the homage of 
a reasonless praise. He knows God, he has spoken to 
God, he has heard the voice of God in his heart. 
This is no illusion, but the most blessed, as it is the 
most certain, of all truths. Faith and love have won 
their everlasting victory in those words, which will 

1 Ps. lxxiii. 21, 22. 



in.] often implied, rather than expressed, 77 

for all time remain the noblest expression of the soul 
pouring itself out towards God : 

" But as for me — I am always by Thee, 
Thou hast h olden me by my right hand. 
Thou wilt guide me in Thy counsel, 
And afterwards Thou wilt take me to glory. 
Whom have I in heaven but Thee 1 

And beside Thee, there is none upon earth in whom I delight. 
My flesh and my heart may fail, 

But God is the rock of my heart and my portion for ever 1 ." 

This great truth, then, of a continuity of existence 
is felt out, rather than reasoned out, by the J ew. 
And hence we so often find that the doctrine of 
Immortality is implied rather than expressed, in 
the Old Testament. We infer its presence, where 
the language does not directly convey it. When a 
Psalmist writes, 

" Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my 
life, 

And I will dwell in the house of Jehovah for ever 2 ;" 

we are certainly not justified (unless it be for our 
own private edification) in interpreting his words to 
mean, that he expected to dwell for ever in God's 
presence in heaven. But we are justified in conclud- 
ing from the very largeness of the expression, that 
he is uttering a hope and a conviction, that the God, 
whose loving-kindness he has tasted all his life long, 
will not suffer him to drop, like a withered leaf from 

1 Ps. lxxiii. 23—26. 

3 Ps. xxiii. 6. See Calvin, in loc. 



78 



The Love of God 



[lect. 



the tree, only to mingle with the dust beneath. Or 
again, who that reads such words of bounding joy in 
God, such intensity and greatness of affection, pour- 
ing itself out upon God, as we find in the 63rd 
Psalm, 

"O God, Thou art my God, 
My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh pineth for Thee, 
For thy loving-kindness is better than life ; 

— who that reads words such as these can persuade 
himself, that the affection thus centered upon God 
could believe itself mocked, could for a moment con- 
ceive, that the love of God, which is the life of God, 
would pass away like water or an untimely birth ? 
The Love of God is Immortality. So likewise, 
what is the meaning of that sublime hymn, which, 
written by Moses in the desert, is now emphatically 
the Christian's funeral anthem ? Is it only a wail 
over disappointed hopes ? Is it nothing but an 
exceeding bitter cry over the transitoriness of hu- 
man life ? Does it sum only the years of our 
mortal pilgrimage, and shut out all beyond ? If so, 
then whence the instinct of the Christian Church, 
which bids us use it as Christians, strong in hope, 
by the grave of those we love ? In those words we 
discern the hope which rises above this world. For 
what means the prayer, 

" So teach us to number our days, 
That we may gather a heart of wisdom 1 ," 

if that wisdom come to an end with the seventy 

1 Ps. xc. 12. 



III.] 



is Immortality. 



79 



years of our pilgrimage ? Or why speak of the eter- 
nal Jehovah, as " the dwelling-place" of man "in all 
generations \" if the hearts He has gathered into that 
home drop from it and are no more remembered ? 
No, whatever doubt and darkness might rest upon 
the grave, however at times the Jewish believer 
might shrink in vague terror from death and the 
uncertainties beyond death, yet he who could say, 
' 0 God, thou art my God,' had the witness within 
himself, that his life could never perish, that neither 
Death nor Hell could pluck him out of the hand 
of God 2 . 

It may possibly have appeared to some minds, 
that I have not given sufficient weight to more 
direct testimony, expressive of the future hopes of 
the saints of old. I cannot disguise my conviction 
that some passages, alleged in proof of that hope, 
do not bear the full stress of the argument based 
upon them. In particular the doctrine of a Resurrec- 
tion, which it must be remembered, is quite distinct 
from the belief in a future existence, holds by no 
means a prominent place in the Old Testament. 
It first appears distinctly in the Prophet Isaiah 3 . 
Ezekiel's parable of a national resurrection 4 may be 
taken as evidence that the doctrine was not unknown 
to him. Daniel expresses it in clear and unam- 

1 Ps. xc. 1. 

2 In the very able Lectures of my immediate predecessor, Mr 
Pritchard, substantially the same view is taken of the Jewish hope of 
immortality. See his Hulsean Lectures, pp. 33 — 55. 

3 ch. xx vi. 19. 4 ch. xxxvii. 



80 Is the doctrine of a Resurrection [lect. 

bisruous terms 1 . But these are all the certain wit- 
nesses, whose voice makes itself heard along all the 
centuries of Old Testament Revelation. The cele- 
brated passage in the Book of Job 2 , when once 
fairly rendered, and taken in connection with the 
general scope of the book, is seen to have no bearing 
on the question. Our English Version has so im- 
printed this sense upon our minds, and the associa- 
tion of those grand and impressive words with some 
of the most solemn scenes of our earthly existence 
has so consecrated them to us, as the utterance of 
our Christian faith, that it requires some courage 
to listen to any other interpretation. It is a shock 
to us to be asked to give up the familiar rendering. 
We shrink from tampering with it„ Yet that ren- 
dering is certainly false. There is no allusion I be- 
lieve either to a resurrection or to a future existence. 
The two great Continental Scholars 3 who maintain 
a reference here to a future life, do so only by sub- 
stituting the forced and unnatural and improbable 
rendering, "without my flesh I shall see God," for 
the simple and straightforward one, "from my flesh 
shall I see God." And most certainly if there be ' 
any expression here of a hope reaching beyond this 
world, then there can be no doubt, I think, that Job 
looks for a resurrection, not merely for a future life. 
But on the other hand I am quite unable to see how, 
even supposing the words capable of such an inter- 

1 ch. xii. 2. 2 ch xix. 23—27. 

3 Ewald and Renan. See more in the Appendix. 



III.] 



taught in the Booh of Job? 



81 



pretation, it can be made to harmonize with the 
context, and especially with the very next answer of 
Job to his friends, where contrasting the lot of men 
in this life, — one man " dying in full strength, being 
wholly at ease and quiet," and another "dying in 
the bitterness of his soul, and never eating with 
pleasure " — he sums up their end alike, 

"They shall lie down alike in the dust, 
And the worm shall cover them/' 

never hinting at anything beyond. The close 
of the Book, where Job is recompensed in this 
life for all his losses and all his calamities, com- 
ports best with the obvious meaning of his words in 
the passage under consideration, that he hopes in 
this life, in the body, in his flesh which he now wears, 
to see God face to face, as his righteous Avenger, 
maintaining his cause, and putting his adversaries to 
confusion. It was precisely because Job had no 
clear vision of the life to come, that he was so 
oppressed with the problem of God's moral govern- 
ment here. It was precisely on that account, that it 
weighed upon his heart, "heavy as lead and deep 
almost as life." Had the sunrise of conviction once 
flashed upon his mind, that his body laid in the dust 
should be raised again to a glorious immortality, in 
the presence of God his Redeemer, could he have 
fallen back again immediately into the tone of dis- 
tress and perplexity, which continues to pervade his 
language ? Was there any need for God to appear 
p. h. l. 6 



82 Our Lord's argument [lect. 

for his rebuke ? Must not the drama have appro- 
priately closed, with this lofty recognition of Eternal 
Righteousness, misunderstood here, manifesting it- 
self in all its integrity hereafter ? 

That view of the Old Testament revelation re- 
specting a future state which I have endeavoured to 
establish, is singularly confirmed by the argument of 
our Lord as recorded by three of the Evangelists. 
He teaches us to find immortality and a resurrection 
in the Old Testament, but He teaches us to find it 
in the spirit rather than in the letter. He teaches 
us to look for it, not as a dogma but as a life, not as 
a revelation, but as implied in and underlying all 
revelation. He refuted Sadducean scepticism by an 
appeal to the writings of Moses, by an appeal to 
those very writings, which to a superficial observer 
seem to make almost an ostentation of reticence on 
the subject. And it is important to observe what is 
the exact nature of His appeal. How does He 
frame His argument ? He might have appealed to 
some passage, such as that in Isaiah, " Awake and 
sing ye that dwell in dust," or that in Daniel, " Many 
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall wake and 
arise/' But in the very fact that He omits all 
reference to these more obvious passages, He seems 
to imply, that there is but little of a direct witness 
to this truth in the Old Testament. If He had 
quoted these, the Sadducee might have argued, that 
they were as nothing, a mere speck, in the whole 
mass of Revelation, or he might have ventured even 



in.] with the Sadducees. 83 

to question the authority of the Book of Daniel. 
But our Lord leaves no door for such fencing with 
texts. He does not attempt to hang so important 
a doctrine on one or two passages, which, it might 
be alleged, stood alone in their bearing. His divine 
philosophy goes far deeper; it lays bare the inmost 
heart and spirit of the Old Testament. He shows 
us how inevitably a Resurrection follows, from the 
very recognition of that relation between God and 
man of which Moses speaks. If the Eternal God 
has made men His friends, if He has taken them 
into covenant with Himself, and declared to them 
His counsel, if He has given them their names, 
singling out His friends from the world, and vouch- 
safing in infinite grace to call Himself their God, 
then He does not mock them with fleeting hopes 
and transitory promises. He does not bid them 
stay themselves on Him, for threescore years and 
ten, and then cast them into the abyss of annihila- 
tion. Even a human father would not let the day 
come, if he could help it, when his child should 
cease to know and love him ; even a human friend 
would never cast from him the friend, whose heart 
was bound up in his own. Much less does the 
Eternal Father and the Eternal Friend, — much less 
does He whose name is Life and Love, suffer His 
children and His friends to perish. God is not 
a man that He should lie or change. His is an 
Everlasting Love. And because He calls the man 
His friend, because He calls Himself the God of 

6—2 



84 



A Resurrection is implied. [lect. 



the individual, singled out by name, therefore the 
whole man must survive the shock of death. It is 
not the spirit's immortality which alone is secured. 
It is not a mere prolongation of existence, of which 
the pledge is given. The body as well as the soul 
is God's. In the body, He calls these men His 
children ; on the body, He sets the seal of His cove- 
nant. And therefore, though the flesh may turn 
to corruption, and the worm may feed upon it, yet 
from their flesh shall they see God, see Him not 
only in this world, the Avenger of their cause, but 
see Him in the world to come, the Judge who metes 
out to them their recompense, the Hewarder of them 
who diligently seek Him. 

Yes, a Resurrection is everywhere in the Old 
Testament to him who can look beneath the surface. 
It lurks in every word which expresses a sense of 
personal relation to God. It breathes in every 
prayer of faith. It is the life of every hymn in 
which the soul lifts itself, on wings of light and 
love, to the Throne of the Eternal. Before you can 
expunge that doctrine from its pages, you must 
expunge the name of every one of the heroes of 
Faith, you must blot out the burning words of 
Psalmists and Prophets, you must deny the reality 
of every aspiration after truth and holiness and 
purity, you must assert that God is the God of the 
dead not of the living ; in a word, you must assert 
the empire of universal death; for " all who live, 
live unto Him." 



in.] The Wisdom of Solomon. 85 

We see reason, then, to correct our first impres- 
sion. Though we meet in the Old Testament, for 
many centuries, with no express revelation of a 
Future Life, though darkness seems for the most 
part to rest upon the grave, yet the hope of the 
faithful Jew is, after all, brighter and truer than 
that of the wisest of the heathen ; for though not 
kindled by direct promise, it rested nevertheless on 
a known and manifested God. And if we trace the 
history of Jewish belief beyond the Old Testament 
scriptures, through the four hundred years which 
intervened between the last of the Prophets and the 
Advent of Christ, we shall see that this belief gains 
greatly in distinctness of expression. Thus the 
Author of The Wisdom of Solomon has portrayed, 
in language full of truth and beauty, the solemn 
retributions of eternity. He has drawn the picture 
of the ungodly leading their lives of selfish merri- 
ment, saying, "Come, let us enjoy the good things 
of youth, let us crown ourselves with rosebuds ere 
they be withered, and let no flower of the spring 
pass by us;" and justifying their conduct by the plea 
that "in the death of a man there is no remedy, 
neither was there any man known to have returned 
from the grave." And he rebukes them for their 
blindness: "Such things they did imagine and were 
deceived, for their own wickedness hath blinded 
them. As for the mysteries of God they knew 
them not; neither hoped they for the wages of right- 
eousness, nor discerned a reward for blameless souls. 



86 Teaching of the Maccabees. [lect. 

For God created man to be immortal, and made him 
to be an image of His own eternity 1 !' Then looking 
on the end of the righteous he exclaims : " But the 
souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and 
there shall no torment touch them. In the sight 
of the unwise they seemed to die, and their departure 
is taken for misery, and their going from us to be 
utter destruction; but they are in peace. For though 
they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their 
hope full of Immortality 2 ." And again, " The 
righteous live for evermore ; their reward also is 
with the Lord, and the care of them is with the 
Most High. Therefore shall they receive a glorious 
kingdom, and a beautiful crown from the Lord's 
hand 3 ." 

It is in the sure hope that they shall attain to 
" a better resurrection," that the Martyr-brothers in 
The Maccabees refuse to accept the tyrant's mercy, 
proffered on the condition that they shall deny their 
God. Thus with his last breath does one of them 
declare his faith, " Thou like a fury takest us out of 
this present life, but the King of the world shall 
raise us up, who have died for His laws, unto ever- 
lasting life*." And the heroic mother standing by, 
and looking with undaunted spirit on the agonies of 
her sons, exhorts them to a like courage and con- 
stancy, saying " Doubtless the Creator of the world, 
who formed the generation of man, and found out the 



1 Chap. ii. 21—23. 
3 Chap. v. 15—16. 



2 Chap. iii. 1—4. 
4 2 Mace. vii. 9. 



ill.] A development of belief. 87 

beginning of all things, will also of His own mercy 
give you breath and life again, as ye now regard not 
your own selves for His laws' sake 1 ." 

A hope thus clear and thus explicit seems almost 
to anticipate on this point the Christian revelation. 
There is no longer any gloom, any shrinking from 
death, even in its most terrible forms. The future 
recompense and the resurrection from the dead are 
unquestioned articles of the popular belief. 

We have traced thus far the growth of belief. 
We have marked its several stages. First, there 
is the belief (at least implied) in a future existence, 
the continuance after death of the personal life, 
though evidently this was held amidst much un- 
certainty as to the nature of that existence. We 
observe next, how the doctrine of a future retribu- 
tion gradually took shape ; and finally, how the 
doctrine of a Resurrection became at last an ad- 
mitted article of the popular Creed. And we 
have seen, further, that the principal factor in this 
belief, thus gradually forcing itself into light, was 
not a distinct revelation, but the living conscious- 
ness of the soul's relation to God. He who knew 
and loved God did so, because he had the life of God, 
and therefore had within himself the witness that he 
could not perish. Hope, the hope of the future, was 
rooted in Faith and Love, and like these made eter- 
nity its own. And so it was, as the Epistle to the 
Hebrews teaches us, that the saints of old "con- 

1 lb. ver. 23. 



88 



Why this long reticence f [lect. 



fessed that they were strangers and pilgrims" here, 
and " desired a heavenly country, and looked for a 
city which hath foundations whose builder and 
Maker is God." 

We might conclude here. But a question arises 
out of this investigation into the nature and growth 
of the Jewish belief which cannot be altogether put 
aside. That there was in the revelation given to 
Moses a strange reticence on this subject cannot be 
denied. Are we able to account for it \ Why was 
there this silence ? why was there only a gradual and 
partial disclosure, for many ages of J ewish life, on a 
subject which is of so absorbing importance, which 
lies so near to the heart of man, which is so essen- 
tial a part of all religion, and which did in fact 
form a leading feature of every heathen system ? 
One thing is perfectly clear that Moses could not 
have been ignorant of the truth. For Moses was 
learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and the 
Egyptians, as we have seen, went beyond all other 
nations in their assertion of personal immortality and 
a judgement after death. His silence is not the 
silence of ignorance. Is it the silence of a delibe- 
rate reserve, or how shall we account for it ? The 
phenomenon is so remarkable, that it has engaged 
the attention of great thinkers in all ages of the 
Church. Augustine and Chrysostom, Aquinas and 
Leibnitz, Bossuet and Warburton have each at- 
tempted to solve this problem, but they scarcely win 
from us a partial assent. The very elaborate attempt 



in.] Two reasons may be alleged. 89 



of a recent writer 1 to deal with the same difficulty is 
anything but convincing. It is scarcely possible to 
read it, without feeling with how much satisfaction 
the contrary thesis would have been maintained, had 
the language of Scripture happened to be the other 
way. With what a tone of triumph would the 
Christian Apologist have then appealed to such a 
revelation, as the most convincing proof of the moral 
superiority of the Jewish faith to that of the Gentile. 
But though we may not be able wholly to explain 
the phenomenon, some light falls upon it from two 
considerations. 

i. First let us remember that God does not 
always teach us as men would have Him teach. 
There is no haste, no impatience, no crowding of 
truth upon truth in His teaching 2 . His lessons are 
deliberate and orderly, and to us who are always in a 
hurry may seem but slowly imparted. But He who 
works in Eternity and is not cramped by time makes 
no haste in what He does. One principle runs 
through all the Divine Education. He speaks to us 
as we are able to bear it, here a little, and there 
a little. Thus He imprints His lessons upon our 
minds. Thus He helps us to educate ourselves. Things 
rapidly learnt are easily forgotten ; truths which we 
attain to through discipline and struggle and failure 
and disappointment, through much self-questioning, 

1 Th. H. Martin, La Vie Future, suivant la Raison et suivant 
la Foi. 

2 On this slowness in the Divine teaching, see Mr Pritchard's II ul- 
sean Lectures. Lect. III. 



90 



A Divine method 



[lect. 



and much self-denial, and much earnest striving, are 
those which lay hold of us, enter into us, form as it 
were the staple of our character. They are those 
to which we cling most steadfastly, and which are 
most serviceable to us in the long run. So it was 
with the truth of the soul's immortality : the very 
struggles through which God's saints had to pass to 
assure themselves of the truth, may have been the 
very reason, why the truth at last appeared to the 
J ew, with a brightness, a distinctness, a purity, which 
it never possessed for the Gentile. 

2. But we may, I think, see a Divine purpose 
in this reticence 1 . God was teaching the fathers 
of the Jewish Church the primary truth on which 
all other truth was to rest, that He and no- 
thing else was their sufficient portion. "I am thy 
shield and thy exceeding great reward," this was 
His great word to Abraham. It was by this that 
Abraham lived. The whole discipline of his life had 
this purpose in it, to lead him to find the everlasting- 
God, his strength, his portion, his all. He was 
called "the friend of God/' and he who had God for 
his friend could need, could have, nothing more. 
On this fact Abraham's life was built, on this, the 
lives of all his true children. The J ews were not 
merely designed to be witnesses to the world of the 
Unity of God. They were this no doubt, but they 
were far more. They were witnesses to a better 
truth, that the Eternal God loves men, and calls them 

1 See my Commentary on the Psalms, Yol. i. pp. lxxvi, lxxvii. 



III.] 



and a Divine purpose. 



91 



His children and His friends, and that men can be, 
and can know themselves to be, His friends and His 
children. It is of this truth that Psalmists and 
Prophets are full. The poetry of the Hebrews, it 
has been well said, is " a poetry of friendship between 
God and man 1 ." And it seems to have been de- 
signed, that the truth of this Divine communion 
should occupy so commanding a position, that no 
other truth should be suffered, as it were, to come 
into competition with it. This was to stand alone 
in its grandeur, because upon it man's life was to be 
built. We must rest upon the broad foundation of 
faith, before we can have the hope that maketh not 
ashamed ; and never can there be a sublimer heroism 
of Faith than that, which, claiming no promise of 
future recompense, goes down into the mystery of 
Darkness, leaning only upon God. 



1 Herder. 



LECTURE IV. 



TEE HOPE OF TEE CERISTIAN. 



John XL 25, 26 and XIV. 19. 

...I am the Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth 
in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and who- 
soever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. 

...Because I live, ye shall live also. 

We have watched hitherto the instinct of the human 
heart, struggling to assert, in the face of death 
and corruption, its hope of immortality. We have 
seen how deep-rooted the conviction of another life 
is, and at the same time, how unable Reason is to 
attain to certainty respecting it. On the one hand, 
man craves and yearns for immortality : on the other 
hand, a future life seems to slip away from him 
in proportion as he strives to satisfy himself of its 
reality. Reason and Conscience are alike witnesses 
to the truth, but they can neither create the truth, 
nor discover the truth, nor prove the truth. Only 
when the truth comes, can they recognize it and 
embrace it as the truth. 



lect. iv.] Christ gives us the word we need. 93 

Now the Revelation of God addresses itself to 
us, as having needs and instincts of the heart and 
conscience, and it satisfies those needs and confirms 
those instincts. Strictly speaking, it does not bring 
before us something strange, novel, unheard of, 
something far removed from our nature and our 
modes of thought, and bid us accept it with a won- 
dering faith, because it comes from above. No, — 
beyond all things else, God's revelation of Himself 
to us, is also a revelation to us of ourselves. It is a 
discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, 
not only because it lays all " naked and opened" 
before God, but because it discovers to ourselves the 
depth and the meaning of our own hearts, their 
motives, their impulses, their yearnings, their inmost 
being. Man cannot understand himself ; he cannot 
express rightly his own thoughts ; when he essays 
to do so, he speaks with lisping tongue, like an 
infant ; and, like an infant, he struggles for the 
word which shall express his meaning, which shall 
utter and convey his thoughts. And Christ, the 
Eternal Word, gives him the word he needs, in- 
terprets his heart, and helps him to interpret it to 
himself. No revelation can be a true revelation, 
which does not thus explain to us our inmost selves, 
which does not break the fetters that limit and cir- 
cumscribe our thought and knowledge, which does 
not set free our stammering tongues, teaching us to 
speak plainly. That which gives it its right and 
its power over us is, that coming from without, it 



04 Certainty of St Paul's hope. [lect. 

seems to be the voice of all that is purest within ; 
that the truth which it declares is in fact our own 
truth, the truth which we are longing to find and to 
utter, the truth w T hich we need. It was this 1 divine 
word ' for which a Socrates was seeking, that upon 
it, as 'a securer vessel/ he might make his journey 
without peril, and for lack of which, he was obliged 
to content himself with 'the best of human words/ 
trusting to it, as to a raft, for the voyage of life. It 
was this ' divine word' which a Paul had found, 
when he wrote, " for we hiow that if the earthly house 
of our tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building 
of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens 1 ." We listen to Socrates, in his prison at 
Athens, ere yet the hour is come when he must 
drink the hemlock, discoursing with calm dignity of 
death and immortality, but confessing his uncer- 
tainty as to what shall be hereafter, and solacing 
himself with the thought, that at the worst death is 
but a dreamless sleep. We turn to the letter which 
Paul wrote, from his prison at Rome, to his Philip- 
pian friends, and there is no shadow of doubt or 
uncertainty here ; every word is lit up with the 
radiance of joy and hope, as he contemplates the 
approach of death — " I have a desire to depart and 
to be with Christ, which is far better;" "to me to 
live is Christ, and to die is gain." 

It is impossible to read such words, without 
feeling, that, to the Apostle Paul, Christ Jesus was 

1 2 Cor. v. 1. 



iv.] 



It rested upon Christ. 



95 



no phantom of the imagination, but a true and living 
person. It is plain, moreover, that it was in conse- 
quence of his own conscious relation to Christ, that 
he had so calm and so sure a hope for the future. 
That hope rested, he asserts again and again, upon 
the Resurrection of Christ, as an historical fact to 
which he could appeal, and upon the risen life of 
Christ, as an experienced fact, of which he had the 
witness in himself. St Paul must have had his 
doubts and his perplexities like other men ; one 
whose heart was capable of such deep tenderness and 
such deep sadness as his, could never have escaped 
from them altogether. Yet it is not by any argu- 
ments, except such as were based on the Resurrec- 
tion of Christ, that he seeks to remove doubts, and 
to plant in other hearts the hope which had given 
courage to his own. St Paul, trained in the school 
of the Pharisees, had been taught from his earliest 
years to accept the resurrection, as an article of 
religious belief ; yet he never falls back on that 
teaching as the ground of his hope. In Christ alone 
did he find " the rock of his heart, and his portion 
for ever." It was because Christ lived, that he lived. 
Christ was his life here ; Christ was in him, the hope 
of glory hereafter. It was this certain assurance of 
a risen Christ, this conscious relation to a risen Lord, 
which filled him w T ith such confidence and exultation 
in the prospect of death, which made him even " de- 
sire to depart," that he might " for ever be with the 
Lord." And here, too, has been the secret and the 



96 Christian Hope rests upon [lect. 

strength of all Christian hope, from the Apostles 
days to our own. It rests upon this double fact, 
the external fact of the Resurrection of Jesus, and 
the internal fact of a present participation in that 
risen life. Hence it is that Christian hope derives 
the confident certainty, by which it is distinguished 
from all other hope whatsoever. 

Now this is the point upon which I am anxious 
to insist. I am anxious to put before you — or rather, 
let me say, to indicate, to suggest, briefly and imper- 
fectly though it must be, the outlines of a philosophy 
of Christian hope. Man and the world are alike, 
in their very constitution, prophets of immortality. 
Man puts away from his lips with loathing the cup 
of annihilation which you offer him, as the anodyne 
of his misery. But where shall he find the ambrosia 
of immortality ? How shall he be quite sure of — not 
desire merely, nor tremblingly expect, nor doubtfully 
anticipate or dread, a life beyond this life ? — how 
shall he be sure, that Death has no power to destroy 
him ; but that he, the same person, the same in his 
memory, in his thoughts, in his affections, in his will, 
shall continue, knowing himself to be himself, and 
perpetuating his own individual existence beyond the 
grave ? Christianity answers by two facts : 

I. First by the Resurrection of Christ. 

II. And next by the Life of Christ communi- 
cated to us. 

I. First, by the Resurrection of Christ. Chris- 
tian hope differs emphatically from all other hope 



IV.] 



the pledge of our Resurrection. 



97 



in this, that it rests, neither upon any instinct 
of the human heart, nor upon any inference from 
human reasoning, nor even upon a promise sent from 
heaven to earth, — -and capable, as all words are, of a 
variety of interpretation — but upon a fact, upon a 
Person. One is set before us, who born into this 
world, as we ourselves are, and living here a 
chequered human life, in no way removed from our 
common lot, bearing upon it the unmistakeable im- 
press of human thoughts and feelings, has in that 
human form achieved the victory over death. It is 
a human history we are reading, when we read the 
history of Christ. We can follow it step by step, a 
series of facts, apart from any theory we may form of 
it, or from any colouring with which imagination 
may invest it. If a future life had merely been 
announced, we might have built upon the announce- 
ment what hopes and what hypotheses we pleased. 
But here we see One made like unto us, in all points 
tempted like as we are, united to us in the fellowship 
of our trial and suffering, and death, rising again 
from the dead and taking with Him the nature 
which Me wears, into the very presence of the 
Majesty on high. Hence we have the visible pledge 
and the type of our own resurrection. 

It is indeed quite conceivable, that such a spec- 
tacle might not be sufficient of itself to assure us of 
our own resurrection to life. We might argue, and 
on reasonable grounds, that such a resurrection, after 
all, was not a type and a prophecy, but an exception 

p. h. l. 7 



93 The Resurrection of Christ [lect. 

to a universal law. The very perfection of our 
Lord's human character might seem to merit some 
exclusive distinction. The cases, it might be said, 
are not really parallel. That life of spotless beauty 
stands alone in the world's history. It may well be 
crowned with glory. But why should the crown 
wherewith God has crowned that perfect life, be 
placed on the head of those, who, if they strive at all 
to lift themselves towards heaven, strive with poor, 
feeble, broken efforts, which seem to end in nothing 
but disappointment? How shall we, born in sin 
and all our life tainted with corruption, gather from 
Christ's resurrection any hope, since assuredly we 
have no claim to His reward ? Most certainly, if 
Jesus Christ were only man, this argument would 
remain in all its force. The resurrection of one 
perfect man could be no valid ground for expecting 
the resurrection of millions of beings imperfect as 
ourselves. But the Incarnation of Jesus gives its 
true and proper significance to His Resurrection. 
It is no longer a unit of the human race, who has 
been singled out for special favour. It is no longer 
a solitary individual, having no other relation to the 
race than this, that like them he has flesh and blood. 
It is One who, as equal with the Eternal Father, 
has the power, as He has the right, to take up 
the manhood into God. The Divine Word did 
not unite Himself to a man. He was " made flesh." 
He became man. He took our nature, and there- 
fore in all that He does and is, our nature has 



iv.] the pledge of our Resurrection. 99 

a share. He took it in its weakness, that He might 
redeem, purify, exalt it. He took it in its liability 
to death, that in it He might vanquish death, and 
set free those, "who through the fear of death, were 
all their life- time subject to bondage." By this His 
union of the human nature with the Divine, He 
became the Second Head of our race, and therefore 
in the truest and deepest sense its Redeemer. For 
he did not stand aloof from us to save us; He did 
not stretch out His hand from heaven to pluck us 
from the jaws of hell ; He did not come as a con- 
queror to break our chains ; but as a friend He 
placed Himself in our prison house, and refused 
not to share our bondage. All that the First Adam 
had brought upon us of ignominy, degradation 
and death, the Second Adam took upon Himself, 
and by taking it, He put it for ever away. Sin 
had made human nature corrupt and foul, and the 
Sinless Man cleansed it from the awful taint. Death 
had made man his prey and set up, as it seemed, a 
Universal Empire, and the human Lord of Life 
broke in pieces that dread dominion. He did not 
merely reverse the sentence of death, by an arbitrary 
annulling of it, but He did so by the actual victory 
of Life over Death, in the same nature which had 
become subject to Death. The Life of God in man 
vanquished Death : it was impossible that that life 
could be holden of Death. The First Adam was 
made " a living soul," and therefore could only trans- 
mit to his posterity the natural life, tainted with sin 

7—2 



100 The Resurrection of the body [lect. 



and containing in it the seed of death. The Second 
Adam was "a quickening spirit," having life in 
Himself, and of power to impart that life to others : 
because the First Adam was "of the earth, earthy"; 
the Second Adam was "the Lord from heaven." 

The Resurrection, then, of Christ Jesus, both 
God and Man, is to us the pattern and the sure 
pledge of our own resurrection, because He is inse- 
parably united to us as the Second Head of our 
race. 

II. But again, Christianity establishes our hopes, 
not only by pointing to an outward fact, but by the 
experience of an inward fact, the communication of 
the life of Christ to all who believe in Him. Jesus 
Christ is the Resurrection because He is the Life, 
and He imparts that life to us, " Because I live, ye 
shall live also." There is a sense in which it may 
almost be said, that the resurrection is begun here, 
because the germ of it is to be found in every re- 
newed and sanctified nature. A power has been put 
forth upon the man, which must issue in his final and 
complete glorification. A life has been begun, which 
in its very nature can never end, because it is the life 
of God Himself. The resurrection to life, though it 
is sometimes described as a gift, is also to be regarded 
as the natural and necessary development of the work 
of grace. Both truths are stated by our Lord in 
His discourse with the Jews, recorded in the 5th 
chapter of St John's gospel: "Verily, verily I say 
unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth- 



iv.] and Eternal Life. 101 

on Hira that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall 
not come into condemnation, but is passed from death 
unto life. Verily, verily I say unto you, The hour 
is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the 
voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. 
For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He 
given to the Son to have life in Himself, and hath 
given Him authority to execute judgment also, be- 
cause He is the Son of Man." Here as in so many 
other places of the New Testament, we are taught 
that eternal life is not merely to be looked for beyond 
the grave, but is a present reality. There is a quick- 
ening of the spirit to newness of life here, as well as 
a quickening of the body hereafter. Of this twofold 
life, Christ is the source. Christ gives eternal life 
to all who believe in Him; Christ raises the dead: 
and He does both the one and the other, by virtue of 
that Divine life which He receives from the Father 
and yet has in Himself 1 , of which He is at once the 
Author and the Giver. It was to give this life that 
He came into the world: "I am come that they might 
have life, and that they might have it more abun- 
dantly 2 ." It is from Him that this life is derived; 
it is only by communion with Him that this life can 
be sustained. So he declares: "I am the living bread 
which came down from heaven : if any man eat of 
this bread, he shall live for ever 3 ." And again: 
"Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and 



1 John v. 26 ; comp. vi. 57. 2 John x. 17. 

3 Jolm vi. 51. 



102 The Resurrection of the body [lect. 

drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso 
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal 
life; and I ivill raise him up at the last day 1 " Here 
likewise there is a reiteration of the same truths; 
here there is the same intimate connection between 
the present gift of eternal life, the present partaking 
of Christ, and the future resurrection to glory. You 
cannot separate these things. That which is spiritual 
is in its very nature eternal. Death is but as the 
episode of a sleep ; it has no power to touch the 
heart of that life which is "hid with Christ in God." 
That life given here in the body imparts to the body 
share in its triumph over death, is the seal and the 
pledge, that even though the body fall into dust, it 
shall be raised again from the dust, incorruptible. 
So essential, indeed, is this connection between the 
life eternal and the resurrection of the body, that it 
is almost the only view of the resurrection which is 
presented to us in Scripture. There are, I believe, 
but two passages in the New Testament, in which the 
resurrection of the wicked is so much as mentioned; 
once by our Lord, when he speaks of a resurrection 
of damnation, to which they that have done evil shall 
come forth from their graves 2 ; and once by St Paul, 
when he acknowledges, as a truth common to himself 
with his J ewish opponents, a resurrection both of the 
just and the unjust 3 . But with these exceptions, the 
other view of the Resurrection is exclusively pre- 

1 John vi. 53, 54. 2 John v. 29. 3 Acts xxiv. 15. 



iv.] and the indwelling of the Spirit. 103 

sented; it is invariably spoken of as the fruit and 
result of a spiritual life, of which Christ is the foun- 
tain and source. The one, as it were, by a moral and 
spiritual necessity, implies the other. "Even the 
universal resurrection," it has been truly said, " shall 
be but the natural development of that which now 
works in the children of God 1 ." 

Sometimes the same lofty and mysterious truth 
is presented to us under another aspect ; and the 
Resurrection is associated with the indwelling in our 
hearts of a Divine Person. Thus, for instance, St 
Paul speaks of Christ as "our Life," as "living in 
us," as " in us the hope of glory." And again, he 
says, "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus 
from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ 
from the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies also 
on account of His Spirit that dwelleth in you 2 ." 
The Resurrection follows from such inhabitation : 
those bodies, in which He has vouchsafed to make 
His tabernacle, are not destined merely to be the 
prey of the worm and to be left in corruption. I know 
it may be said, that to speak of such a Divine life 
and such a Divine indwelling is mysticism. It may 
be set down as a pious sentiment, or the dream of a 
disordered imagination. Yet a heathen 3 will rebuke 
the hasty speech and the shallow thought, which 
deny that man's heart can be the chosen abode of a 
heavenly visitant, and will tell us, that " there dwells 



Archer Butler. 



2 Rom. viii. 11. 



Seneca. 



104 The Sanctification of the body [lect. 

in us a Holy Spirit, who keeps watch over our 
thoughts and actions." And surely unless we are 
prepared to deny the possibility of so high and blessed 
a gift of grace, unless we are prepared to maintain, 
that the noblest and purest of our race, the men of 
the loftiest aims and holiest lives, have been the 
victims of a mere delusion, we must admit the 
reasonableness of the scheme, which connects the life 
here with the life hereafter ; we must admit the force 
of the conclusion, that the body, which God has 
deigned to sanctify, shall be raised again to a glo- 
rious immortality. If it be true, that Jesus Christ, 
the Eternal Word of the Father, has as the fruit of 
His own Death and Resurrection sent the Holy 
Ghost, to dwell in our hearts and to make our bodies 
His temple, then that Divine visitant sheds His 
sanctifying influences upon the whole man. Every 
member of the body is consecrated to the service of 
the most High God. The eye, the ear, the hands, 
the feet, all have been baptized with a Divine bap- 
tism. " Holiness to the Lord" is written even on the 
outermost edge of the garment of the flesh. Not 
only is the heart filled with joy and peace, with 
meekness and gentleness, with faith and hope and 
love, but the body in all its appetites and desires is 
governed and sanctified by the same holy Presence. 
Those imperious lusts, those ungovernable passions, 
which naturally hold the dominion of the body, till 
the flesh imposes its thraldom upon the spirit, and 
the soul itself, made the slave of lust, becomes tran- 



iy. ] implies the Resurrection. 105 

substantiated into flesh 1 , are not crushed and extir- 
pated by the crushing and extirpating of the body, 
but are brought into obedience to the law of the 
Spirit of Life. The body as well as the spirit is holy. 
One part of our nature is not left to curse and 
barrenness whilst the dew of heaven falls richly upon 
the other. When St Paul exhorts the Colossians, as 
partakers of a spiritual resurrection together with 
Christ, to "mind the things above," connecting the 
exhortation with the thought of Christ's appearing, 
and the future glory of the Christian, lie immediately 
adds : " Deaden therefore your members which are 
upon the earth";" and he proceeds to enumerate sins 
of the flesh, sins for which the body in its members 
and organs furnishes the instruments. And when 
writing to the Romans, in the passage already quoted, 
he speaks of the resurrection, as effected on account 
of the indwelling of the Spirit, he subjoins the 
exhortation : " Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not 
to the flesh to live after the flesh. For if ye live 
after the flesh, ye shall die : but if ye through the 
Spirit do deaden the deeds of the body ye shall live 3 ." 
The body is to be reverenced and sanctified, because 
the Spirit of God dwells in it, and because by His 
mighty power working in it, it shall be raised from 
death. Thus, then, according to the Christian scheme, 
our hope is doubly assured. It is assured not only 
by the Resurrection of Christ as an outward fact : it 

1 Auima victa libidine fit caro. — Augustine. 
■ „ . 2 Coloss. iii. 1—10. 3 Rom. yiii. 12, 13. " ; 



106 The Christian hope higher [lect. 

is assured by the gift of eternal life, by the indwelling 
of Christ and of His Spirit in our hearts, there 
reigning and ruling, sanctifying the whole man; not 
purifying the spirit only, but shedding a divine 
unction upon the body, and so giving the pledge and 
the foretaste not only of immortality, but of a Resur- 
rection to life and glory. 

Such a hope, consistent in itself, and satisfying 
the deepest needs of our nature, essentially differs 
from and transcends all pre-Christian hope. 

What was the hope of the best and wisest of 
pagan philosophers ? At most, a bare hope of Immor- 
tality, a bare hope of personal continuance after death, 
in some vague and shadowy form. But Christ does 
not preach to us Immortality, He does not promise 
us merely an eternity of individual existence ; He 
gives us now the life which cannot die, He gives it 
to us in the body, that the body may be consecrated 
to God. Nay more, God has not only come to 
tabernacle with us in human flesh, but He dwells in 
us, He is one with us, His Life is ours. Our souls 
and our bodies are His, filled and pervaded with His 
Life, and therefore can never perish. 

What was the hope of the Jew ? Kindling with 
triumph and ecstasy, as it rose above the world and 
time and death, and laid its hand upon God, it won 
for itself the conviction, that He who was the Life of 
His children and the Rock of their hearts, would 
also be their portion for ever. But the Jew had still 
the horror of Death unvanquished, of the grave from 



tv.] than all pre-Christian hope. 107 

which none had ever returned. Whereas the Chris- 
tian believer is partaker of a life which he not only 
knows to be the Life of God, but the Life of God 
which in human flesh has overcome death, and there- 
fore the sure pledge that he himself also shall over- 
come death. It is the same Life ; it must therefore 
win the same victory. Not only is it true, " He that 
believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live," but it is also true — and of this he has the 
witness in himself — " Whosoever liveth and believeth 
in Me, shall never die." Death is abolished. The 
Life of which he has been made partaker is one over 
which Death has no power, for it is the Life of Him 
who says : " Because I live, ye shall live also." 

But again, the Christian doctrine of the Re- 
surrection of the Body is not only self- consistent, it 
commends itself to us as in perfect harmony with 
the observed facts of our nature. For all experience 
shows us how close and intimate is the union be- 
tween the soul and the body. It is quite true that 
so far as our observation extends, the material 
organism is destroyed by death. It may be very 
difficult to frame any probable hypothesis for the 
reconstitution of the body, after it has turned to 
corruption. And yet as by an imperious necessity, 
the body enters into all our conceptions of another 
life : we would not " be unclothed but clothed upon." 
And this is not exclusively a Christian sentiment. 
In spite of the famous saying of Plotinus, who 
thanked God 'that he was not tied to an immortal 



108 The Resurrection in harmony [lect. 

body'- — a saying which doubtless is expressive of 
a widely prevailing phase of ancient philosophic 
thought — a natural instinct is on the side of the 
Christian revelation. Is it not difficult even to con- 
ceive of the spirit, as not merely continuing to exist 
apart from the body, — that is a conception which 
is certainly possible — but as continuing to live, and 
continuing to act, in the true sense of the word, apart 
from all organism whatever ? Have w T e not seen, 
how in every attempt to picture to himself a future 
world, and the employments of the future world, 
man involuntarily gives some shape, some form, in a 
word some body, to the disembodied spirit ? And 
is not this necessary % Does not all thought ber 
come action only through the instrumentality of 
the body ? Does not the body act upon the mind, 
as well as the mind upon the body ? Does not the 
body express, in its very outlines, the harmony or 
the disharmony, the beauty or the ugliness, of the 
unseen dweller within ? Are not the features stamp- 
ed with the expression of the care and the sorrow, 
the passion and the unrest, the fierceness and the 
hate that are working within, or with the peace, the 
serenity, the deep calm, as of the infinite depth of 
heaven itself, which the soul thus reflects as in a 
mirror ? How vivid, how startling often is the ex- 
pression ! What a revelation there of the inner man ! 
How often even after the soul has fled, there re- 
mains upon the cold features of the corpse, the living 
impress of that soul, as if it disputed the empire 



IV.] 



with observed facts. 



109 



■of death. Is it not almost as if the soul had but 
taken flight for a moment, and the body were wait- 
ing- for the return of its tenant ? Never can one 
who has witnessed this forget it. In circumstances 
favourable to the preservation of the body, Death 
has no power to rob it of this witness to its immor- 
tality. "Who that has ever seen that wonderful 
death-group in the dead-house of the Hospice of the 
St Bernard has not felt fascinated and appalled by 
this triumph of life in death ? In a corner of that 
dark chamber are to be seen a mother and her child. 
Her eye is turned to Heaven in supplication, and 
agony is written in every feature as she strains her 
child to her bosom, and prays to God for mercy and 
succour. It was thus she sank in the blinding 
snow, it was thus she died. Years have passed 
since then ; yet the thought, the agony, the prayer 
of that last moment, are written on her face, never 
to be obliterated, till the form shall crumble, and 
return to its dust, and perish. Such a spectacle 
gives us a vivid conception of the imperishable con- 
nection between mind and body. It helps us to 
understand how possible it is — may we not say how 
natural it is ? — that in the world to come, the soul 
should resume its ancient fellowship with the body. 
Would not this indeed be almost a logical inference 
from the belief, that in the other world we our proper 
selves shall still continue ? Human beings consist of 
body, as well as soul. The continuance of human 
beings implies the continuance of body as well as of 



110 TJie Resurrection of the body. [lect. 

soul. Only as we anticipate the enlargement and per- 
fection of the powers of the soul, so we may reason- 
ably anticipate the perfecting and the exaltation of 
the body. In the language -of the Apostle, u It is 
sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption ; it is 
sown in weakness, it is raised in power ; it is sown a 
natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." 

The Christian Doctrine of a Future Life, then, 
it may be said, is in conformity with our nature, and 
meets and satisfies those yearnings, which are in 
themselves a witness to our immortality. It re- 
gards the whole of man's compound nature. It 
introduces no dissonance, it does not honour one 
part of our being, to the neglect or degradation of 
the other. The Life of which it speaks is a life 
of the body as well as of the spirit, a life the form 
and pledge of which are given in the Resurrection of 
Christ, a life which is actually communicated to us, 
by a true and vital union with Him : " Because 
I live, ye shall live also." 

I must pass by many topics of interest which 
rightfully belong to my subject; for time presses. 
In particular I can say nothing now of future re- 
wards and punishments. 

But hastening on I must still glance briefly, be- 
fore I conclude, at some of those speculative difficul- 
ties which beset the doctrine of the Resurrection of 
the body. And I do so, because I know from ex- 
perience, what a real stumblingblock they are to 
minds by no means dull or uninstructed. 



iv.] Speculative difficulties. Ill 

"Some man may say, How are the dead raised 
up, and with what body do they come?" The ques- 
tion put in St Paul's day is still frequently repeated 
in our own. How can the same body which falls 
into dust be raised again, to become anew the taber- 
nacle of the immortal spirit ? The particles of which 
it is composed may be scattered to the four winds, they 
may assume new forms, they may be made to con- 
tribute to the formation of other beings — of plants, 
of animals, of men. How can each several particle be 
disentangled, how shall each be brought together 
again to constitute the same body which was dissolved 
at death? Now we presume to put no limits upon 
the Almighty power of God. We do not doubt that 
amid all the ceaseless infinite fluctuations < of the 
material particles His eye could trace each grain 
of dust, and His hand collect it, and bring it back to 
reconstitute the body. But we contend that any 
such process is as unnecessary as it is improbable. 
"We maintain that the same body which has been 
laid in the grave may be raised at the last day; 
though not one single material particle, which went 
to constitute the one body, shall be found in the 
other. For what is it that is necessary to the iden- 
tity of the body? The identity of the body does not 
depend on the identity of the material particles of 
which it is composed. These are in a state of per- 
petual flux. The body of our childhood is not the 
body of our youth, nor the body of our youth that 
of our manhood, nor the body of our manhood that 



112 The Resurrection of the body. [lect. 



of our old age. Every particle has changed, and yet 
it is the same body : the person to whom it belongs 
still continues the same person. If you insist upon 
it that every particle of matter of which my body 
is built must be brought together to form my new 
resurrection-body, then I ask, What body during 
this present life is my true body? Is it the body 
of my childhood, or of my youth, or of my old 
age? The body in which I die is no more truly 
mine, than the body with which I came into the 
world. Both are mine, both are in some sense 
the same, and yet they have not a single material 
particle in common. What possible reason is there 
then for contending, that the body which is laid in 
the grave, must be brought together again, particle 
for particle, at the resurrection ; when it is no more 
essentially a part of myself, than my body at any 
other stage of my existence? The only thing of 
which we need to be assured is, that the principle of 
identity which governs the formation of the body in 
this life, shall govern its formation at the resurrec- 
tion. In the ever-flowing torrent of life, as wave 
after wave passes through our bodily frame, bringing 
with it growth and variety in the structure, there is 
some principle, or law, or specific form, call it what 
you will, which remains ever the same. The organ- 
ism is essentially one, despite <the modifications of 
size, of form, of inward constitution. This holds in 
every region of nature, where there is life. From 
the acorn buried in the earth, there springs first 



IV.] 



Natural analogies. 



113 



the little slender stalk, the germinant shoot hidden 
between its two cotyledons, then the sapling, then the 
monarch of the forest. But the oak and the germi- 
nant shoot, and the acorn, unlike as they are in ap- 
pearance, are one and the same vegetable existence. 
The butterfly which unfolds its wings of purple and 
gold in the summer's sun, is the same creature which 
was but lately a chrysalis, and before that a crawling 
worm, and before that an embryo in a tiny egg. 
And is it not the same with man? Is not the 
human embryo the same individual when it becomes 
child, youth, old man? And yet does there remain 
in the oak, in the butterfly, in the man, a single 
one of the ponderable molecules which existed in 
the germ, the egg, the embryo ? What physiologist 
would venture to affirm there is? And still we 
repeat, it is the same vegetable, the same insect, the 
same man. 

What then is this thing which remains ever the 
same, the same in the vegetable in all its develop- 
ments, the same in the insect in all it metamor- 
phoses, the same in the human body in every phase 
of its existence ? What is this, which never perishes, 
is never destroyed, in all the changes and fluctuations 
of the material organism? It escapes all our inves- 
tigations ; we see it only in its manifestations, in the 
phenomena of life ; but that it is a reality all ob- 
servation goes to show : and if through all the 
changes of the body during this life, this principle 
continues in all its force, why may it not survive the 

p. h. l. 8 



114 The Resurrection of the Body [lect. 

shock of death ? Why may not this specific form, 
as Gregory of Nyssa terms it, remain united to the 
soul, as he conjectured (and as other thinkers like 
Leibnitz have supposed), after its separation from the 
body, and thus become at length the agent in the 
resurrection, by reconstituting, though in a new and 
transfigured condition, the body which was dissolved 
at death ? Why may not the same body, which was 
sown in corruption, be raised in incorruption, and 
that which was sown a natural body, be raised a 
spiritual body ? There is at least nothing im- 
probable in such a supposition ; there is everything 
in the analogies of Nature to confirm it; and when 
Revelation is silent, we may be thankful for such 
glimpses of probability as come to us in aid of our 
Faith, 

Lastly, this deliverance, this perfection, this 
glorifying of the human body, is in the Christian 
scheme, intimately connected with the deliverance, 
the perfection, the glorifying of the whole visible 
creation. As they who are one with their risen 
Lord, ransomed by Him from the power of Death, 
and raised with Him even here to newness of life, 
still wait for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of 
their body; so when that redemption shall be accom- 
plished, the creation itself shall be delivered from 
the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of 
the children of God. There shall be new heavens 
and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
This is the great consummation, to which all is 



iv.] and the glory of Creation. 115 

tending. The universal curse shall be changed into 
universal blessing. The signature of Sin and Death, 
and the serpent's trail, shall be for ever effaced, and 
the signature of God, unblotted and undefiled, shall 
be seen on every portion of the works of His hands. 
All things shall reach that perfection, that ideal 
which now as it were with sighs and groans of 
travail, they seem ever to be seeking, never to 
attain. For there is nothing created so mean, or so 
trifling, that it is not a thought of God, and there- 
fore it must be realized, it must be perfected. " All 
that is transitory," says the great German poet, " is 
only a parable 1 ," a parable of that which in truth it 
ought to be, of that which finally it shall be. "That 
which falls short of its end," he continues, "shall 
attain to its end." It shall be seen that not one of 
the creative thoughts of God, not one of His works 
has only a transitory purpose, that nothing has been 
made only to be destroyed, but that all has been 
made to be perfected, transfigured, glorified. " Be- 
hold I make all things new ;" these are the words of 
glorious hope, of boundless promise, which the seer 
of the New Testament hears issuing from the Ever- 
lasting Throne. The veil which hides the inner 
glory of the world, the covering spread over all 
nations, the symbol of transitoriness and corruption, 
shall be taken away, and coming forth as by a 
resurrection, in new splendour and beauty, shall be 



1 Alles Vergangliclie ist nur ein Parabel. — Goethe. 

8—2 



116 



Anticipation. 



[lect. 



perfectly disclosed the hidden meaning, the eternal 
idea, of its Creator and Redeemer, God. 

But meanwhile, tied and bound as we are with 
the chain of earthly things, busied with the poor 
and fleeting aims of this life, buried in its cares, its 
pleasures, its distractions, can we for a moment rise 
above them and make full proof of our eternal 
hopes ? Can we grasp Eternity in the midst of 
time ? Can we without being led astray by the 
false lights of the imagination, obtain some fore- 
taste of the future glory ? 

"More than fourteen centuries ao-o 1 , on the shores 
of the Italian sea, that Eternal life of which I have 
been speaking was the subject of discourse between a 
woman who was drawing near to the end of life, and 
a man, still in the prime of his years, who had just 
consecrated himself to the work of Christ. "We may 
have seen the engraving from a picture by Ary 
Scheffer at the bottom of which are inscribed the 
words, ( St Augustine and his mother Monica.' We 
may have noticed those two faces turned towards the 
same heaven, where one seems to be seeking some 
foretaste of an approaching felicity, and the other, 
the strength and the courage which should fit him for 
his arduous task, as the future champion of the 
Faith. In the page which inspired the painter, 
Augustine thus speaks : 

'When the day drew near on which my mother 



1 See E. Naville, La Vie Eternelle. 



IV.] 



St Augustine, 



117 



was to leave this life, it chanced that we found our- 
selves alone, she and I, leaning upon the sill of a 
window which looked on the garden of the house 
where we had stopped at the port of Ostia. There, 
far from the crowd, after the fatigue of a long 
journey, we were waiting for the moment when we 
must set sail. We were alone, conversing with 
indescribable sweetness; and forgetting the past, and 
stretching forward towards the future, we asked our- 
selves, what shall be for the saints that eternal life, 
which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, and which 
hath not entered into the heart of man"? And 
borne aloft on the wing of Love towards Him who 
is, we climbed, as it were, up through those celestial 
regions, whence the stars, the moon and the sun, 
send us their light. And rising still higher in our 
thoughts, in our words, in our admiration of Thy 
works, O Lord, we sought in our own souls to attain 
to that uncreated wisdom, which is that which it 
hath been, that which it shall be always, or rather, 
in which there is no hath been, or shall he, but only is, 
because it is eternal. And as we thus spake, in our 
ardent aspirations towards that life, we touched it 
for a moment with a bound of the heart, and sighed 
as we left there captive the first-fruits of the Spirit, 
and came back again to the sound of the voice, to 
the word which begins and ends. 

1 Then we said : Let there be a soul in which every 
earthly passion is hushed, and the soul itself hushed 
into silence and forgetfulness of itself; let there be no 



118 



The Christian Hope 



[lect. 



voice heard in it, but the voice of Him alone speaking 
not by His creatures, but by Himself ; let Him 
speak only whom we love in all, and speak in the 
absence of all ; let our thought rest only in Him, 
and insensible to every lower object, ravish, lead us 
captive, absorb us, in that great joy ; in short, let 
the eternal life be but like that fugitive ecstasy, the 
remembrance of which makes us still sigh— is not 
this the promise of that word : " Enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord"? Such were our thoughts in this 
conversation ; and that same day my mother said to 
me, ' My son, so far as I am concerned, there is 
nothing more to bind me to life. What should I do 
in it ? There was one thing for which I desired to 
continue in life, and that was to see you a Christian, 
before I died. My God has granted me that, and 
more than that ; why should I tarry here any 
longer 1 ?'" 

In this page, " in which the faith of a Christian is 
expressed in the language of a Plato," St Augustine 
declares that he obtained, for a brief passing moment, 
a sight of the heavenly glory surpassing thought and 
all power of human utterance. Such a vision may 
not be vouchsafed to us. It is not given to all men 
to see, with a Stephen, heaven open and Jesus stand- 
ing on the right hand of God, or with a Paul, to be 
rapt into the third heavens, or with a John at 
Patmos, to gaze on the temple above, and the golden 

1 Augustine, Confess. Lib. ix. I have omitted some portions of the 
passage and freely paraphrased others. 



iv.] and the Christian Triumph. 119 



city, and saints and angels, striking their harps and 
raising their triumphant songs to the Lamb who 
died ; but it is given to every servant of God to know- 
in whom he has believed. The humblest and the 
weakest need not fear death, because Jesus has 
died. The humblest and the weakest may lie down 
in the grave, in sure hope of a joyful Resurrection. 
For each one may say, with meek yet rejoicing faith, 
He loved me; He gave Himself for me; He rose 
from the dead. What shall separate me from the 
love of Christ ? In all things I am more than 
conqueror through Him that loves me. " For I am 
persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature, shall be able to separate me from the love 
of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." " Because 
He lives I shall live also." 



APPENDIX. 



Lecture I. p. 11. Note A. 

SlNCE writing this Lecture, I have read Professor Tyndall's 
Address delivered by him as President of the Mathematical 
and Physical Science Section of the British Association at 
their Meeting in Norwich last year. A passage in that 
address, which amply confirms all that I have said on the 
relation of the brain to thought, I here subjoin : 

" Associated with this wonderful mechanism of the animal 
body, we have phenomena no less certain than those of 
physics, but between which and the mechanism we discern 
no necessary connexion. A man, for example can say, I feel, 
I think, I love ; but how does consciousness infuse itself into 
the problem? The human brain is said to be the organ of 
thought and feeling : when we are hurt, the brain feels it ; 
when we ponder, it is the brain that thinks ; when our 
passions or affections are excited, it is through the instru- 
mentality of the brain. Let us endeavour to be a little 
more precise here. I hardly imagine that any profound 
scientific thinker, who has reflected upon the subject, exists, 
who would not admit the extreme probability of the hypo- 
thesis, that for every fact of consciousness, whether in the 
domain of sense, of thought, or of emotion, a certain definite 
molecular condition is set up in the brain; that this relation 



122 



Apjiendix. 



of physics to consciousness is invariable; so that given the 
state of the brain, the corresponding thought or feeling 
might be inferred ; or given the thought or feeling, the cor- 
responding state of the brain might be inferred ? But how- 
inferred? It is at bottom not a case of logical inference at 
all, but of empirical association. You may reply that many 
of the inferences of science are of this character, the inference 
for example that an electric current of a given direction will 
deflect a magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases 
differ in this, that the passage from the current to the needle, 
if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no 
doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem; but 
the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding 
facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite 
thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur 
simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor 
apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable 
us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one phenome- 
non to the other. They appear together, but we do not 
know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, 
strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and 
feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of 
following all their motions, all their grouping, all their 
electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately 
acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and 
feeling, we should probably be as far as ever from the solu- 
tion of the problem, How are these physical processes con- 
nected with the facts of consciousness? The chasm between 
the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually 
impassable. Let the consciousness of love, for example, 
be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the 
molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate with a 
left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we 
love that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate 
that the motion is in the other, but the 'Why?' would 
still remain unanswered. In affirming that the growth of 



Appendix. 



123 



the body is mechanical, and that thought, as exercised by 
us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think 
the position of the 'materialist' is stated as far as that 
position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able 
finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I do 
not think as the human mind is at present constituted, that 
he can pass beyond it. I do not think he is entitled to say 
that his molecular grouping and his molecular motions 
explain everything. In reality they explain nothing. The 
utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of 
phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute 
ignorance. The problem of the connexion of body and soul 
is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the pre- 
scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to enter into the 
composition of the human brain, and a courageous writer 
has exclaimed in his trenchant German, 4 Ohne Phosphor 
Kein Gedanke.' That may or may not be the case; but 
even if we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would not 
lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here 
assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If you 
ask him whence is this i matter,' of which we have been 
discoursing, who or what divided it into molecules, who 
or what impressed upon them this necessity of running 
into organic forms, he has no answer. Science also is mute 
in reply to these questions. But if the materialist is con- 
founded and science is dumb, who else is entitled to answer? 
To whom has the secret been revealed ? Let us lower our 
heads and acknowledge our ignorance one and all. Perhaps 
the mystery may resolve itself into knowledge at some future 
day." 

From the Athenmum for Aug. 29, 1868. 



124 



Appendix. 



Lecture III. p. 80. 

After all that has been written on this celebrated passage 
(Job xix. 24 — 26), the rendering still remains doubtful, as 
well as the interpretation. 

Ewald renders : 

0 dass doch aufgeschrieben meine Worte, 

ins Buch — o dass sie wiirden eingezeichnet ; 
mit EisengrifTel und niit Blei 

auf ewig wiirden in den Fels gehauen ! 
Aber ich weiss es, mein Erloser lebt, 

ein Nachmann auf dem Staube wird erstehen ; 
nach meiner Haut, die man abgeschlagen, dieser, 

und frei vom Leibe werd' ich schauen — Gott : 
ihn den ich schauen werde mir, 

gesehn von meinen Augen und nicht fremden ! 
— es schwinden die Nieren in Busen mir ! 

Renan : 

Oh ! qui me donnera que mes paroles soient e'crites, 
Qu'elles soient ecrites dans un livre, qu'elles soient gravees 

Avec un stylet de fer et avec du plomb, 
Qu'a jamais elles soient sculptees sur le roc; 

Car je le sais, mon vengeur existe, 
Et il apparaitra enfln sur la terre. 

Quand cette peau sera tombee en lambeaux, 
Prive' de ma chair, je verrai Dieu. 

Je le verrai pour moi-meme; 

Mes yeux le contempleront, non ceux d'un autre; 

Mes reins se consument d'attente au-dedans de moi. 



Appendix. 



125 



Ren an explains this hope on the part of Job that he 
"shall see God," by saying: "Job s'abandonne a l'espe'rance 
de voir Dieu descendre un jour sur la terre, quand il sera 
reduit a l'etat de squelette, pour le venger de ses adver- 
saires." Both he and Ewald, as I have remarked, render, 
^fcyjjb "without my flesh," thus conceding to Job the hope 
of Immortality, but not conceding to him the hope of a 
Resurrection. But although Jfo is certainly sometimes used 
in a negative sense, I believe that in all cases where it is so 
used, there is something in the context to guide us as to its 
signification. Used as it is here, merely dependent on such 
a verb as njn.X, I confess it seems to me that the prepo- 
sition can only have its usual meaning "from." So far I 
entirely agree with Dr Pusey's criticism when he says (Da- 
niel, p. 505 note): " The rendering of ^B^Jjb, 'without my 
flesh,' adopted by Davidson, II. 227, from Ewald, is unidio- 
matic and unnatural. JJb can no more, of itself, mean ' with- 
out' than our 'from'." But I must part company from him, 
when he asserts, that 11 no doubtful meaning of any words 
can efface from the passage the doctrine of the resurrection 
of the flesh," and I must demur to his rendering of the line : 

And after my skin, they have destroyed this body, 

as being to the full as objectionable, as the rendering of the 
line following by Ewald, Renan, and. others. What possible 
pretext can there be for supplying the noun "body" with 
the feminine pronoun MKT? The word "body" is not in 
the original, nor is it suggested by the context, any more 
than the word " worms," which has been introduced by our 
Authorized Version. I believe myself it is better to take 
the pronoun adverbially, with Havernick, or as a kind of 
further predicate, said Se^/m/ccw? 1 , and I would render the 
passage as follows : 

1 And so it is also taken in H. H. Bernard's Book of Job, edited by 
Mr Chance, p. 171, where the whole passage is explained as having only 
a reference to this life. 



126 



Appendix. 



" I, even I, know that my Redeemer liveth, 
And that at the last, He shall stand upon the earth (lit. 
dust) ; 

And after my skin has been thus pierced through 1 , 

Yet from my flesh, I shall behold God, 

Whom I shall behold for myself, 

And mine eyes shall behold and not a stranger's. 

My reins are consumed within me." 

The last line probably alludes to Job's longing for the time 
when God shall appear to maintain his cause against his 
friends, and to make his innocence clear. Having men- 
tioned the name of Havernick, I may say, that in his Vor- 
lesungen uber die Theologie des Alien Testaments, p. 203, he 
discusses the passage critically, and denies all reference in it 
to a future life, though he also renders -"ib^jb "und von 
Fleisch entblosst," connecting this, however, with what pre- 
cedes, and explaining it to mean, "in spite of all I have 
suffered, though I am but like a skeleton without flesh, still 
I shall see God, i.e. be conscious of and enjoy his immediate 
manifested presence in this life." It is painful to think that 
the interpretation of such a passage should be made a test 
of orthodoxy, and that a critic may incur the charge of 
" rationalism" who dares to say honestly, that he cannot ac- 
cept the current interpretation, that he believes the Hebrew 
has another meaning. It is therefore some relief, to find a 
critic of such unquestionable orthodoxy as Havernick taking 
the same view. Surely it is high time, as I have already 
said in my Preface, that we should agree to settle the mean- 
ing of words, in accordance with the rules of grammar, and 
with reference to the general scope of a writer's argument ; 
and that we should abstain from calling one another hard 
names, when we happen to differ in our conclusions. 

1 In allusion to the ghastly disease, probably elephantiasis, from 
which he was suffering. 



Appendix. 



127 



I cannot but think, that the more carefully the Book of 
J ob is studied, as a whole, the less probable will it appear 
that he is here uttering any distinct hope either of Immor- 
tality or of a Resurrection. On what grounds Mr Liddon 
{University Sermons, p. 99) can speak of the Book as 
" throughout a very hymn of immortality," I am at a loss 
to conceive. A recent writer, M. Godet, in his review of 
Kenan's Job, has taken, as it seems to me, a far juster view 
both of the general scope of the Poem, and also of the par- 
ticular passage under consideration. His article appeared 
first in the Revue Ghretienne for 1860, and subsequently, 
translated into German, in the Studien unci Kritiken for 
18G3. 

At the risk of lengthening this note somewhat unduly I 
give the following extract : 

"The problem [of the Book of Job] is this, How far suf- 
fering is a proof of guilt? Is the punishment always in 
proportion to the sin? Does the epithet "merited" neces- 
sarily attach to the word " misfortune " ? 

" The love of our neighbour seeks anxiously for an escape 
from such a conclusion. The Book of Job shows us how to 
escape from it. In this Book, God Himself initiates us into 
one of the deepest mysteries of His government. He teaches 
us that there are cases in which He chastens men, neither 
for their transgression, nor to purify them, but only for His 
own glory. Blessed is the man, who suffers for so high an 
end! That he can do so is his glory; that he will do so is 
God's glory." 

" No one, I think, will deny the loftiness of such a Theo- 
dicsea. 

" W e must however draw attention to the remarkable cir- 
cumstance, that the Book of Job succeeds in solving the 
problem without introducing the doctrine of future retribu- 
tion, a doctrine which has always been regarded as abso- 
lutely necessary to its solution. 



128 



Appendix. 



" Have not all thinkers from Plato to Kant had recourse 
to the dogma of the immortality of the soul, when they have 
attempted to explain the apparently unequal distribution of 
human suffering ? The Book of Job is a solitary exception : 
the Poet ventures to handle the problem without any such 
assistance. Was it perchance, as some critics have conjec- 
tured, that the dogma of immortality was unknown to him ? 
Granted that it were so, it would redound the more to his 
honour, that he should have succeeded in solving the pro- 
blem, under circumstances so unfavourable to success. To 
say nothing, however, of examples like those of Enoch and 
Elijah, the Book of Genesis hints, in more than one pas- 
sage, at a belief in personal continuance after death. For 
instance, a distinction is made between the burial of Abra- 
ham and his being "gathered to his fathers" (xxv. 9). More- 
over it is well known, that the doctrine of immortality and 
future retribution were fundamental articles of the Egyptian 
creed. How could such truths be unknown to the Hebrews, 
who had lived in Egypt for 400 years ? The rudest tribes have 
had some conception of this truth ; how impossible to suppose 
that the nation, which in point of religious education was 
the most advanced, should alone have remained ignorant 
of it ? Historically such a view is absolutely without founda- 
tion. How comes it to pass then, that the Book of Job, 
which ought to have laid particular stress on this truth, as 
being according to our modes of thought decisive of the 
question, makes no use of it at all ? 

" Revelation amongst the Jewish nation has, as we might 
expect, always kept pace with the history. It has deve- 
loped, extended, taken its shape, in the same degree as the 
destiny of the people. It was the destiny of Israel to pre- 
pare the way for the setting up of the kingdom of God, not 
in heaven but upon earth, by means of the Messiah. Conse- 
quently all questions bearing on personal continuity of ex- 
istence had, in the strictest sense, nothing to do with the 
positive mission of this people. Express revelations on this 



Appendix, 



129 



point would have turned away their eyes from the goal set 
before them, instead of fixing them upon it. With the 
Christian Church the case is very different. This has a 
destiny which embraces both heaven and earth. In this 
way is very naturally explained the silence of the Old Testa- 
ment, and the fulness of revelation in the New respecting 
the future life. But the author of the Book of Job who 
came forward, not as a philosopher but as the organ of Reve- 
lation, could not step beyond the limits of the Revelation 
then vouchsafed. 

" If, however, he is silent with regard to the doctrine of 
future recompense, he nevertheless lays the foundation stone, 
on which it is afterwards built. Do we not see at the close of 
the Poem, the stream of the divine blessings pouring itself 
forth in all its fulness, when the hero's time of trial is at an 
end ? The divine mercy descends upon him all the more 
richly in proportion to his sufferings for God. Does not the 
author thus point to a law, which includes the principle 
of retribution? Whether this law comes into operation in 
this life or in the next, is a matter of indifference to him. 
The Singer boldly places himself above this alternative. The 
law itself engages his attention more than its application. 

" But I shall perhaps be found fault with for ascribing to 
him a strain of thought to which he was a stranger. Unin- 
fluenced by all the contradictory explanations which have 
been given of it, I appeal simply to the well-known passage 
in which Job rises to the summit of his hope, chap. xix. v. 25 
(following De Wette's translation) : 

" ' I know that my Redeemer liveth, and the last He 
remaineth upon the earth ; and after this my skin is pierced 
through, even without my flesh shall I see God ; yea, I my- 
self shall behold Him, mine eyes shall see Him, and not a 
stranger.' 

"Does Job utter in these words his belief in the Resurrec- 
tion, as the majority of orthodox interpreters assume, or is 
he thinking merely of his recovery from his malady ? I 

P. H. L. 9 



130 



Appendix. 



venture (omitting all philological disquisition) to maintain, 
that the answer to this question would perhaps have occa- 
sioned as much perplexity to Job, as to his commentators. 
Does he know himself what will become of that body of his, 
withered to a skeleton ? Can he say whether the eating 
leprosy will finish its work of destruction, or whether God 
will arrest this devouring fire ? He cannot ; and conse- 
quently he cannot say positively beforehand what will be the 
method of his redemption. One thing only he knows, that 
whether it be by the way of healing or by means of the Kesur- 
rection, he shall live again. For his Redeemer lives; he 
knows Him; it is his God. Yes, Job shall live, for his God, 
like the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, is not a God 
of the dead but of the living. 

" J ob's assurance has reference neither to the method, nor 
to the place, nor to the hour, but merely to the thing itself. 
It makes no attempt, after having uttered itself, to discover 
the means and ways by which God will bring this to pass. 

" This glorious conviction is certainly not the same thing 
as the dogma of personal perpetuity of existence ; but who 
will deny that it is the pith and substance of all living 
belief in this truth ? It may be left to later revelations to 
develop further the thought which lies at the bottom of 
these words and to give it clearer expression, but they can 
add nothing to the shout of victory with which Job bids 
defiance to the leprosy or to death. 

"It must be acknowledged, then, that the author kept 
strictly within the limits of the revelation vouchsafed to his 
own age, and yet nevertheless fully met all the require- 
ments of the problem. He has succeeded in throwing a 
clear light on the mystery of suffering Innocence, without on 
the one side availing himself of the fact of sin committed, or 
the dogma of a future life, and without on the other side 
doing the smallest violence to the righteousness of God. 
The glance into the Sanctuary of God, which the Prologue 
gives, has fully satisfied him. If we were here in the field 



Appendix. 131 

of speculation, this solution would appear to us a master- 
piece." 



Lecture III. p. 88. 

It is perhaps hardly correct to say that Chrysostom has 
attempted a solution of the problem. He goes so far as to 
assert that the Jews before our Lord did not know the very 
name of Gehenna, or the resurrection, that till then they had 
never heard, either from their prophets, or from any one 
else, of the resurrection, or of the kingdom of heaven. In 
particular he denies that Job had any knowledge of these 
truths. {Homilies on St Matthew, x. p. 142 a) ; xxxiii. (al. 
xxxiv.) p. 386 D; xxxvi. (al. xxxvii.) p. 412 A (ed. Bened.). 
Comp. x. p. 145 D, and xvi. p. 210 A. However, in another 
place (Serm. on Genesis, torn. iv. p. 194), he admits that, 
though the promises of the Old Testament were earthly, still 
the saints under that dispensation hoped for heavenly blessed- 
ness. Augustine, on the other hand, maintains that there 
was a preparation made by Moses, and others of the sacred 
writers, for the revelation of these truths, but that in them 
the doctrine of a future life is but darkly and enigmatically 
expressed. (De Gestis Pelagii, c. v. § 14, 15; contra Faustum 
lib. xv. and Epist. 140; De Civ. Dei, x. 24, 25). So also 
Theodoret (In Deuteronom.) Qucest. 34; and Bernard, Serm. 
xxx. in Cant.). These Fathers find a reason for the reticence 
of the Old Testament in the fact that the Jewish nation was 
too rude and ignorant, to be capable of receiving truths so 
lofty; and they maintain that the veil was raised little by 
little, till at last it was wholly taken away by the Gospel. 
Leibnitz (Preface to his Theodicee) takes the same view. 

Bossuet writes (Diss, de Psalmis, I. 8) : Sane confitemur 
futuri sseculi felicitatem non perspicuis disertisque verbis, sed 
sub flgurarum involucris, pro Veteris Testamenti ratione, a 



132 



Appendix. 



sancto Davide, fuisse adumbratam." And later he suggests 
an explanation (lb. 10) : " Quin igitur, inquies, sanctus David 
hasc futuri sasculi bona exponebat planis disertisque verbis ? 
Nempe quia hsec parce commemoranda erant, quae crassioribus 
ingeniis risui, aut etiam offendiculo futara essent : quippe 
cum in mortuorum animabus, more gentilium, nihil nisi 
impios cultus, falsos deos scilicet ex hominibus consecratos, 
aut placandis manibus inferias, ac divinationes umbrarumque 
citationes, sive, ut vocant, necromantias, aliaque perinde 
inania, imo etiam noxia et infanda, cogitarent. Itaque ani- 
marum ac futuri saeculi arcana crasso adhuc populo tecta sub 
figuris, quibus et perfecti doceri, nec rudiores gravari possent." 
So again, in his Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle, (Part II. 
ch. 19) : "Durant les temps qui ont precede Jesus-Christ, ce 
que l'ame connaissait de sa dignite et de son immortalite 
l'induisait le plus souvent a erreur. Le calte des hommes 

morts faisait presque tout le fond de Tidolatrie C'est 

pourquoi la loi de Moise ne donnait a l'homme qu'une 
premiere notion de la nature de lame et de sa felicite... C'est 
un des caracteres du peuple nouveau, de poser pour fondement 
de la religion la foi de la vie future, et ce devait etre le fruit 
de la venue du Messie." 



Lectuee IV. pp. 96 and 114. 

Nitzsch takes substantially the same view of the Christian 
scheme : 

"Die blosse Fortdauer und Unsterblichkeit der Seele, 
oder die blosse Befreiung von der irdischen Behausung 
erfiillt die christliche HofTnung nicht ; denn die Vollendung 
des Einzelnen ist selbst in keiner Weise vollkommen, 
solange das Ganze der Schopfung und der Kirche nicht 
mit ihm und er mit dem Ganzen vollendet ist. Der Christ 



Appendix. 



133 



wartet einer Erlosung des Leibes Rom. viii. 23. Demnach 
hoffen die Christen Auferstelnmg der Todten, und Christi 
Auferstehung ist das geschictliche, die Gabe des heiligen 
Geistes, des Geistes der Herrlichkeit, das innere Unterpfand 
derselben. 1 Cor. xv. 20, Rom. viii. 11, der Leib aber der 
Auferstandnen nicht der verwesete, noch der verwesliche. 
Natur und Leib hegen ein grosses, tiefes Geheimniss. Die 
Natur selbst soli frei werden von der Eitelkeit und Ver- 
ganglichkeit, der sie unterworfen ist. Das Hervorgehen aus 
dem Grabe ist nur das Bild oder die tbeilweise Erscheinung 
einer verklarenden Wiedergeburt oder Yerwandlung unsers 
Einzellebens, in welch er wir dem verklarten Leibe des Erlosers 
ahnlich werden, nachdem wir in der Zeit das Bild des irdischen 
Adams getragen haben. Phil. iii. 21, 1 Cor. xv. 35 — 50." 

System der Christlichen Lehre, p. 372 (4te Ausgabe). 

Mr Westcott's admirable essay on "the Gospel of the 
Resurrection" should be cod suited by all who wish to see the 
whole argument for our Christian hope clearly and satisfac- 
torily stated. 



Cambridge : pkixted by c. j. clay, m.a. at the university press. 



JUST PUBLISHED. 



THE 

BOOK OF PSALMS; 

A NEW TRANSLATION, 
Introductions anti MoU$ Icxnlanatorg anli ©rtttcal. 



By J. J. STEWART PEROWNE, B.D. 

Vice-Principal and Professor of Hebrew in St. David's College, Lampeter, 
and Examining Cliaplain to the Lord Bishop of Norwich; 
late Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON VOL. I. 

THE GUARDIAN. 

" It would be rash to say that Mr. Perowne's Work on the Psalms -will please everybody ; 
but we are sure that few readers will consult it once without desiring to consult it again. 
It is a learned, honest, reverent, and thoughtful work, and will be found exceedingly useful 
by students of unlike habits of mind and different shades of opinion. Mr Perowne is occu- 
pied, in the first place, with matters of fact : the instinctive desire to grasp the literal truth 
is a prominent feature of his mind. The tone of his Commentary is devotional ; he is by no 
means insensible to poetic beauty; but, in the conception of his work, devotion and poetry 
do not find a place till after the systematic use of grammar and dictionary. He would first 
fix the meaning of the words of a Psalm ; next ascertain, if possible, its historical allusion ; 
and then consider it in its relation to the whole body of divine truth, or to the diffused beauty 

and glory of the universe He throws the result of his labours into an invitiug form, 

putting before each Psalm an introduction, describing in simple and expressive language its 
occasion and object, and appending an analysis of its contents. Next follows the translation, 
with such notes subjoined to it as are intelligible to every one who can read his New Testa- 
ment in the Greek. The notes, which can only be appreciated by the advanced Hebrew 
student, form a separate and concluding portion to the comment on each Psalm. Mr 
Perowne's forte is detail, with which, however, he deals in no dry, forbidding spirit, but as 
one who is sensible of the mysterious heights and depths which encompass the soul of man. 
He uses history and philology like one who feels that they are the handmaids, not the rulers 
of theology; and, far from conferring a meaning on the sacred text, derive, in fact, their own 
profounder meaning from it. "We have no hesitation in saying that Mr Perowne's work is 
almost indispensable to the student who seeks, with the aid of modern research, to approx- 
imate to a true interpretation of the Psalms." 

THE CLERICAL JOURNAL. 

" t It is not uncommon for enthusiasm to evaporate considerably when an object of taste — 
especially, perhaps, when a high order of religious feeling belongs to it— is subjected to the 
process of criticism. The Psalms have suffered in this way under the hand of the so-called 
'higher criticism '—which deserves that name by being more pedestrian than any other. But, 
though Mr Perowne takes a scholar-like view of the Book of Psalms, considered as a col- 
lection of Hebrew poetry, he is far from regarding it as the mere inspiration of any earth- 
born genius; or as adapted to excite the mere poetic emotions. He says: 'The very excel- 
lence of the Psalms is their universality. They spring from the deep fountains of the human 
heart, and God, in His providence and by His Spirit, has so ordered it that they should be 

for His Church an everlasting heritage No surer proof of their inspiration can be given 

than this, that they are "not of an age, but for all time," that the ripest Christian can use 
them in the fulness of his Christian manhood, though the words are the words of one who 

lived centuries before tiie coming of Christ in the flesh.' We regard this work of 

Mr Perowne as a most valuable contribution to our sacred literature. The author devoutly 



2 



feels the inspiration of his subject, without being betrayed by enthusiasm to the violation of 
exegetical faithfulness. The unlearned reader may sit at his feet with confidence, and the 
scholar will find that in most cases the translator and commentator bas given good gramma- 
tical reasons for his conclusions." 



CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE. 

"Mr Perowne's work carries with it all the marks of genuine Hebrew scholarship; 
and to persons accustomed to consult other works of the same kind, it is most satisfactory 
to notice the multiplied instances in which he has displayed his critical acumen and 
extensive Biblical learning. He manifests all through this Psalter that minute know- 
ledge of words, and their varying forms, that attention to the force of particles, that fine 
distinction between words (which some might fancy were synonymous, because similar), 
that none can doubt his power skilfully to impart knowledge to his students." 



CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER. 

" The author's familiarity with the original Hebrew is extensive. No theological 
student can afford to dispense with Mr Perowne's labours, to which we wish a happy 
termination." 



READER. 

"It is a learned and a thorough work; but one of the most obvious of its merits is not 
the least important: we mean its adaptation to the wants and the use of the ordinary 

reader The book is one which may be studied with pleasure and profit by a very large 

circle of readers The most devout reader will not complain of any lack of religious 

warmth in Mr Perowne's comments. Critical analysis has not lowered the spiritual value 
of the Psalms in his eyes. On the whole, we cannot but congratulate him on having 
produced a most acceptable and valuable work." 



SATURDAY REVIEW. 

" Mr Perowne is probably as capable as any one in England of doing all that Hebrew 
scholarship can do towards a better knowledge of the Psalms. He can give us all the light 
that there is to be had about the construction and meaning of a difficult passage. He can 
hold an even and fair balance between the conflicting opinions of other scholars. He knows 
what others have done, and makes a candid and intelligent use of it. If we wanted to find 
out what could be made of one of those strange verses which often carry with them such 
remarkable suggestions and associations, yet baffle us utterly when we try to analyse their 
meaning, Mr Perowne will do more for us than any other English writer to clear up the 
obscurity. He will give an exact and accurate account of what has been made out on the 
subject, or he will wisely and sensibly tell us that there are now no means of knowing. He 
may not always satisfy us, but he has manifestly worked over the ground carefully, con- 
scientiously, and intelligently, seeing the difficulties, and taking the right way to deal with 
them ; and the learning which he has brought together gives a value of its own to his book, 
and makes it an important contribution to a department of Biblical scholarship in which we 
are at present rather poorly furnished." 



THE CHURCHMAN. 

" The plan on which Mr Perowne proceeds is well judged. Before each Psalm he gives 
a short introduction on the structure and subject. He then gives a new translation of the 
Psalm, arranged in the Hebrew parallelisms, to which are subjoined notes explanatory, 
illustrative, and occasionally practical, intended for the English reader. These again are 
followed by another set of notes, purely philological, and for the benefit of the student of 
the original. Thus each Psalm is fully treated, and one branch of explanatory matter does 

not interfere with and become confused with another There is a good arrangement 

of matter, a thorough acquaintance with modern literature on the subject, and an unwilling- 
ness on the part of the writer to be led, though he often is led, into interpretations not 
consistent with the analogy of the catholic faith, and the reverence due to Holy Scripture as 
its own interpreter." 



Cambridge, 

March, 1869. 



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